II MODULO

Women and short stories

This module will focus on the reading and analysis of a number of short stories by women writers of the United States. Attendance is highly recommended. THE COURSE IS TAUGHT IN ENGLISH.

Students attending classes (see also the writing study pack) During the course students will be invited to build a portfolio of writing activities The portfolio will include a variety of tasks, chiefly related to textual analysis and critical essays, and will be partially carried out during classes, under the instructor’s supervision. Classes are two hours each.

Bibliography - short stories Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” (1894) Edith Wharton, “The House Of The Dead Hand” (1904) Dorothy Parker, “The Sexes” (1927) Dorothy Parker, “Big Blonde” (1929) Two short stories chosen among the following Susan Glaspell, “A Jury of Her Peers” (1917) Katherine Anne Porter, “Theft” (1930) Jean Stafford, “The Interior Castle” (1944) Ann Petry, “Like a Winding Sheet” (1946) Flannery O'Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953) Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing” (1961) Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” (1966) Alice Walker, “Everyday Use” (1973) Margaret Atwood, “Rape Fantasies” (1977) Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl” (1983) Susan Sontag, “The Way We Live Now” (1987) Cynthia Ozick, “The Shawl” (1989) Lorrie Moore, “You’re Ugly, Too” (1989) Pam Houston, “The Best Girlfriend You Never Had” (1997)

- further reading: Sandra Gilberg and Susan Gubar, “Toward a Feminist Poetics”, in The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, Duke UP, 1079. Excerpts from Judith Butler, “Critically Queer”, GLQ: A Journal in Gay and Lesbian Studies, 1: 1, 1993, pp. 17-32

Students NOT attending classes Students who cannot attend classes will have to take the final exam, which will assess their knowledge of the texts and their capacity to critically engage the texts within a historical and literary framework.

Bibliography - short stories Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” (1894) Edith Wharton, “The House Of The Dead Hand” (1904) Dorothy Parker, “The Sexes” (1927) Dorothy Parker, “Big Blonde” (1929) Susan Glaspell, “A Jury of Her Peers” (1917) Katherine Anne Porter, “Theft” (1930) Jean Stafford, “The Interior Castle” (1944) Ann Petry, “Like a Winding Sheet” (1946) Flannery O'Connor, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1953) Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing” (1961) Joyce Carol Oates, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” (1966) Alice Walker, “Everyday Use” (1973) Margaret Atwood, “Rape Fantasies” (1977) Jamaica Kincaid, “Girl” (1983) Susan Sontag, “The Way We Live Now” (1987) Cynthia Ozick, “The Shawl” (1989) Lorrie Moore, “You’re Ugly, Too” (1989) Pam Houston, “The Best Girlfriend You Never Had” (1997)

- critical texts: Sandra Gilberg and Susan Gubar, “Toward a Feminist Poetics”, in The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, Duke UP, 1079. Gary Gutting, Foucault. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford UP, 2005, chapter 9 (“Modern Sex”), pp. 91- 100. Excerpts from Judith Butler, “Critically Queer”, GLQ: A Journal in Gay and Lesbian Studies, 1: 1, 1993, pp. 17-32

1

THE YELLOW WALLPAPER Charlotte Perkins Gilman

IT is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity, — but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it. Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted? John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures. John is a physician, and perhaps — (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) — perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see, he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression, — a slight hysterical tendency, — what is one to do? My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing. So I take phosphates or phosphites, — whichever it is, — and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again. Personally I disagree with their ideas. Personally I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal — having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition. I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus — but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden — large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them. There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now. There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and co-heirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years. That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid; but I don't care — there is something strange about the house — I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was adraught, and shut the window. I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition. But John says if I feel so I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself, — before him, at least,—and that makes me very tired. I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty, old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it. He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another. He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more. He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. "Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time." So we took the nursery, at the top of the house. It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playground and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls. 2

The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off — the paper — in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate, and provoke study, and when you follow the lame, uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide — plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions. The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow- turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. There comes John, and I must put this away, — he hates to have me write a word.

WE have been here two weeks, and I haven't felt like writing before, since that first day. I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength. John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way! I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already! Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able — to dress and entertain, and order things. It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous. I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wall paper! At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies. He said that after the wall paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on. "You know the place is doing you good," he said, "and really, dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three months' rental." "Then do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are such pretty rooms there." Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down cellar if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain. But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things. It is as airy and comfortable a room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim. I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper. Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deep-shaded arbors, the riotous old- fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try. I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me. But I find I get pretty tired when I try. It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fire- works in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now. I wish I could get well faster. But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down. I got positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other. 3

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store. I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend. I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe. The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here. The wall paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother — they must have had perseverance as well as hatred. Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed, which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars. But I don't mind it a bit — only the paper. There comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing. She is a perfect, an enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick! But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows. There is one that commands the road, a lovely, shaded, winding road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows. This wall paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn't faded, and where the sun is just so, I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design. There's sister on the stairs!

WELL, the Fourth of July is over! The people are all gone and I am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week. Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now. But it tired me all the same. John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so! Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far. I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous. I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time. Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone. And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to. So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal. I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall paper. Perhaps because of the wall paper. It dwells in my mind so! I lie here on this great immovable bed — it is nailed down, I believe — and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion. I know a little of the principles of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of. It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise. Looked at in one way, each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes — a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens — go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity. But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase. The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction. They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion. 4

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the cross-lights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation, after all, — the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction. It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap, I guess.

I DON'T know why I should write this. I don't want to. I don't feel able. And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief. Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much. John says I mustn't lose my strength, and has me take cod-liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat. Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wished he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia. But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished. It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness, I suppose. And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till he tired my head. He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well. He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let my silly fancies run away with me. There's one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wall paper. If we had not used it that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds. I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here, after all. I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see. Of course I never mention it to them any more, — I am too wise, — but I keep watch of it all the same. There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder — I begin to think — I wish John would take me away from here!

IT is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so. But I tried it last night. It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around, just as the sun does. I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another. John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall paper till I felt creepy. The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out. I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move, and when I came back John was awake. "What is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't go walking about like that — you'll get cold." I thought it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away. "Why, darling!" said he, "our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can't see how to leave before. "The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better. I feel really much easier about you." "I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening, when you are here, but it is worse in the morning, when you are away." "Bless her little heart!" said he with a big hug; "she shall be as sick as she pleases. But now let's improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning." "And you won't go away?" I asked gloomily. "Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really, dear, you are better!" 5

"Better in body, perhaps" — I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word. "My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake and for our child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?" So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn't, — I lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.

ON a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind. The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well under way in following, it turns a back somersault, and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream. The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions, — why, that is something like it. That is, sometimes! There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes. When the sun shoots in through the east window — I always watch for that first long, straight ray — it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it. That is why I watch it always. By moonlight — the moon shines in all night when there is a moon — I wouldn't know it was the same paper. At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern, I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be. I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, — that dim sub-pattern, — but now I am quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour. I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can. Indeed, he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal. It is a very bad habit, I am convinced, for, you see, I don't sleep. And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake, — oh, no! The fact is, I am getting a little afraid of John. He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look. It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, that perhaps it is the paper! I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I've caught him several timeslooking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once. She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry — asked me why I should frighten her so! Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John's, and she wished we would be more careful! Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!

LIFE is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was. John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall paper. I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wall paper — he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away. I don't want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I think that will be enough. I'm feeling ever so much better! I don't sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime. 6

In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing. There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously. It is the strangest yellow, that wall paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper — the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it — there is that smell! Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad — at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful. I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house — to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper — a yellow smell! There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs around the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch, as if it had been rubbed over and over. I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round — round and round and round — it makes me dizzy!

I REALLY have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move — and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern — it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads. They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside-down, and makes their eyes white! If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.

I THINK that woman gets out in the daytime! And I'll tell you why — privately — I've seen her! I can see her out of every one of my windows! It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden. I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once. And John is so queer, now, that I don't want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself. I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once. But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time. And though I always see her she may be able to creep faster than I can turn! I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

IF only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little. I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much. There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don't like the look in his eyes. 7

And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give. She said I slept a good deal in the daytime. John knows I don't sleep very well at night, for all I'm so quiet! He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I couldn't see through him! Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months. It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.

HURRAH! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in town over night, and won't be out until this evening. Jennie wanted to sleep with me — the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone. That was clever, for really I wasn't alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight, and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper. A strip about as high as my head and half around the room. And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me I declared I would finish it today! We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before. Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing. She laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired. How she betrayed herself that time! But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me — not alive! She tried to get me out of the room — it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner — I would call when I woke. So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bed-stead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it. We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home to-morrow. I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again. How those children did tear about here! This bedstead is fairly gnawed! But I must get to work. I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I don't want to go out, and I don't want to have anybody come in, till John comes. I want to astonish him. I've got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her! But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on! This bed will not move! I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner — but it hurt my teeth. Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision! I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try. Besides, I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued. I don't like to look out of the windows even — there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall paper, as I did? But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope — you don't get me out in the road there! I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jennie asks me to. For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way. 8

Why, there's John at the door! It is no use, young man, you can't open it! How he does call and pound! Now he's crying for an axe. It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door! "John, dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!" That silenced him for a few moments. Then he said — very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!" "I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door, under a plantain leaf!" And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it, of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door. "What is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what are you doing?" I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane! And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!

THE STORY OF AN HOUR Kate Chopin

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message. She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her. There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams. She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought. There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air. Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will — as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination. And yet she had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering. Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg, open the door — you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door." "Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window. Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom. Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. But Richards was too late. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease — of the joy that kills. Reading and Discussion Questions on Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

1. What is the nature of Mrs. Mallard's "heart trouble," and why would the author mention it in the first paragraph? Is there any way in which this might be considered symbolic or ironic?

2. The setting of the story is very limited; it is confined largely to a room, a staircase, and a front door. How does this limitation help to express the themes of the story?

3. In what ways is this passage significant? "She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves." What kinds of sensory images does this passage contain, and what senses does it address? What does the vision through the open window mean to her? Where else does she taste, smell, or touch something intangible in the story?

4. What kind of relationships do the Mallards have? Is Brently Mallard unkind to Louise Mallard, or is there some other reason for her saying "free, free, free!" when she hears of his death? How does she feel about him?

5. Mrs. Mallard closes the door to her room so that her sister Josephine cannot get in, yet she leaves the window open. Why does Chopin make a point of telling the reader this? How might this relate to the idea of being "free" and to the implicit idea that she is somehow imprisoned? Do other words in the story relate to this idea?

6. What does Josephine represent in the story? What does Richards represent?

7. Mrs. Mallard is described as descending the stairs "like a goddess of Victory." In what ways does she feel herself victorious?

8. The last line of the story is this: "When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease – of joy that kills." In what ways is this an ironic statement? What is gained by having the doctors make such a statement rather than putting it in the mouths of Josephine or Richards?

9. What view of marriage does the story present? The story was published in 1894; does it only represent attitudes toward marriage in the nineteenth century, or could it equally apply to attitudes about marriage today?

10. If this is, in some sense, a story about a symbolic journey, where does Mrs. Mallard "travel"?

Edith Wharton The House Of The Dead Hand

I

"Above all," the letter ended, "don't leave Siena without seeing Doctor Lombard's Leonardo. Lombard is a queer old Englishman, a mystic or a madman (if the two are not synonymous), and a devout student of the Italian Renaissance. He has lived for years in Italy, exploring its remotest corners, and has lately picked up an undoubted Leonardo, which came to light in a farmhouse near Bergamo. It is believed to be one of the missing pictures mentioned by Vasari, and is at any rate, according to the most competent authorities, a genuine and almost untouched example of the best period. "Lombard is a queer stick, and jealous of showing his treasures; but we struck up a friendship when I was working on the Sodomas in Siena three years ago, and if you will give him the enclosed line you may get a peep at the Leonardo. Probably not more than a peep, though, for I hear he refuses to have it reproduced. I want badly to use it in my monograph on the Windsor drawings, so please see what you can do for me, and if you can't persuade him to let you take a photograph or make a sketch, at least jot down a detailed description of the picture and get from him all the facts you can. I hear that the French and Italian governments have offered him a large advance on his purchase, but that he refuses to sell at any price, though he certainly can't afford such luxuries; in fact, I don't see where he got enough money to buy the picture. He lives in the Via Papa Giulio." Wyant sat at the table d'hote of his hotel, re-reading his friend's letter over a late luncheon. He had been five days in Siena without having found time to call on Doctor Lombard; not from any indifference to the opportunity presented, but because it was his first visit to the strange red city and he was still under the spell of its more conspicuous wonders -- the brick palaces flinging out their wrought-iron torch-holders with a gesture of arrogant suzerainty; the great council-chamber emblazoned with civic allegories; the pageant of Pope Julius on the Library walls; the Sodomas smiling balefully through the dusk of mouldering chapels -- and it was only when his first hunger was appeased that he remembered that one course in the banquet was still untasted. He put the letter in his pocket and turned to leave the room, with a nod to its only other occupant, an olive-skinned young man with lustrous eyes and a low collar, who sat on the other side of the table, perusing the Fanfulla di Domenica. This gentleman, his daily vis-a-vis, returned the nod with a Latin eloquence of gesture, and Wyant passed on to the ante-chamber, where he paused to light a cigarette. He was just restoring the case to his pocket when he heard a hurried step behind him, and the lustrouseyed young man advanced through the glass doors of the diningroom. "Pardon me, sir," he said in measured English, and with an intonation of exquisite politeness; "you have let this letter fall." Wyant, recognizing his friend's note of introduction to Doctor Lombard, took it with a word of thanks, and was about to turn away when he perceived that the eyes of his fellow diner remained fixed on him with a gaze of melancholy interrogation. "Again pardon me," the young man at length ventured, "but are you by chance the friend of the illustrious Doctor Lombard?" "No," returned Wyant, with the instinctive Anglo-Saxon distrust of foreign advances. Then, fearing to appear rude, he said with a guarded politeness: "Perhaps, by the way, you can tell me the number of his house. I see it is not given here." The young man brightened perceptibly. "The number of the house is thirteen; but any one can indicate it to you -- it is well known in Siena. It is called," he continued after a moment, "the House of the Dead Hand." Wyant stared. "What a queer name!" he said. "The name comes from an antique hand of marble which for many hundred years has been above the door." Wyant was turning away with a gesture of thanks, when the other added: "If you would have the kindness to ring twice." "To ring twice?" "At the doctor's." The young man smiled. "It is the custom." It was a dazzling March afternoon, with a shower of sun from the mid-blue, and a marshalling of slaty clouds behind the umbercolored hills. For nearly an hour Wyant loitered on the Lizza, watching the shadows race across the naked landscape and the thunder blacken in the west; then he decided to set out for the House of the Dead Hand. The map in his guidebook showed him that the Via Papa Giulio was one of the streets which radiate from the Piazza, and thither he bent his course, pausing at every other step to fill his eye with some fresh image of weather-beaten beauty. The clouds had rolled upward, obscuring the sunshine and hanging like a funereal baldachin above the projecting cornices of Doctor Lombard's street, and Wyant walked for some distance in the shade of the beetling palace fronts before his eye fell on a doorway surmounted by a sallow marble hand. He stood for a moment staring up at the strange emblem. The hand was a woman's -- a dead drooping hand, which hung there convulsed and helpless, as though it had been thrust forth in denunciation of some evil mystery within the house, and had sunk struggling into death. A girl who was drawing water from the well in the court said that the English doctor lived on the first floor, and Wyant, passing through a glazed door, mounted the damp degrees of a vaulted stairway with a plaster AEsculapius mouldering in a niche on the landing. Facing the AEsculapius was another door, and as Wyant put his hand on the bell-rope he remembered his unknown friend's injunction, and rang twice. His ring was answered by a peasant woman with a low forehead and small close-set eyes, who, after a prolonged scrutiny of himself, his card, and his letter of introduction, left him standing in a high, cold ante- chamber floored with brick. He heard her wooden pattens click down an interminable corridor, and after some delay she returned and told him to follow her. They passed through a long saloon, bare as the ante-chamber, but loftily vaulted, and frescoed with a seventeenth-century Triumph of Scipio or Alexander -- martial figures following Wyant with the filmed melancholy gaze of shades in limbo. At the end of this apartment he was admitted to a smaller room, with the same atmosphere of mortal cold, but showing more obvious signs of occupancy. The walls were covered with tapestry which had faded to the gray-brown tints of decaying vegetation, so that the young man felt as though he were entering a sunless autumn wood. Against these hangings stood a few tall cabinets on heavy gilt feet, and at a table in the window three persons were seated: an elderly lady who was warming her hands over a brazier, a girl bent above a strip of needle-work, and an old man. As the latter advanced toward Wyant, the young man was conscious of staring with unseemly intentness at his small round-backed figure, dressed with shabby disorder and surmounted by a wonderful head, lean, vulpine, eagle-beaked as that of some artloving despot of the Renaissance: a head combining the venerable hair and large prominent eyes of the humanist with the greedy profile of the adventurer. Wyant, in musing on the Italian portrait-medals of the fifteenth century, had often fancied that only in that period of fierce individualism could types so paradoxical have been produced; yet the subtle craftsmen who committed them to the bronze had never drawn a face more strangely stamped with contradictory passions than that of Doctor Lombard. "I am glad to see you," he said to Wyant, extending a hand which seemed a mere framework held together by knotted veins. "We lead a quiet life here and receive few visitors, but any friend of Professor Clyde's is welcome." Then, with a gesture which included the two women, he added dryly: "My wife and daughter often talk of Professor Clyde." "Oh yes -- he used to make me such nice toast; they don't understand toast in Italy," said Mrs. Lombard in a high plaintive voice. It would have been difficult, from Doctor Lombard's manner and appearance to guess his nationality; but his wife was so inconsciently and ineradicably English that even the silhouette of her cap seemed a protest against Continental laxities. She was a stout fair woman, with pale cheeks netted with red lines. A brooch with a miniature portrait sustained a bogwood watchchain upon her bosom, and at her elbow lay a heap of knitting and an old copy of The Queen. The young girl, who had remained standing, was a slim replica of her mother, with an apple-cheeked face and opaque blue eyes. Her small head was prodigally laden with braids of dull fair hair, and she might have had a kind of transient prettiness but for the sullen droop of her round mouth. It was hard to say whether her expression implied ill-temper or apathy; but Wyant was struck by the contrast between the fierce vitality of the doctor's age and the inanimateness of his daughter's youth. Seating himself in the chair which his host advanced, the young man tried to open the conversation by addressing to Mrs. Lombard some random remark on the beauties of Siena. The lady murmured a resigned assent, and Doctor Lombard interposed with a smile: "My dear sir, my wife considers Siena a most salubrious spot, and is favorably impressed by the cheapness of the marketing; but she deplores the total absence of muffins and cannel coal, and cannot resign herself to the Italian method of dusting furniture." "But they don't, you know -- they don't dust it!" Mrs. Lombard protested, without showing any resentment of her husband's manner. "Precisely -- they don't dust it. Since we have lived in Siena we have not once seen the cobwebs removed from the battlements of the Mangia. Can you conceive of such housekeeping? My wife has never yet dared to write it home to her aunts at Bonchurch." Mrs. Lombard accepted in silence this remarkable statement of her views, and her husband, with a malicious smile at Wyant's embarrassment, planted himself suddenly before the young man. "And now," said he, "do you want to see my Leonardo?" "Do I?" cried Wyant, on his feet in a flash. The doctor chuckled. "Ah," he said, with a kind of crooning deliberation, "that's the way they all behave -- that's what they all come for." He turned to his daughter with another variation of mockery in his smile. "Don't fancy it's for your beaux yeux, my dear; or for the mature charms of Mrs. Lombard," he added, glaring suddenly at his wife, who had taken up her knitting and was softly murmuring over the number of her stitches. Neither lady appeared to notice his pleasantries, and he continued, addressing himself to Wyant: "They all come -- they all come; but many are called and few are chosen." His voice sank to solemnity. "While I live," he said, "no unworthy eye shall desecrate that picture. But I will not do my friend Clyde the injustice to suppose that he would send an unworthy representative. He tells me he wishes a description of the picture for his book; and you shall describe it to him -- if you can." Wyant hesitated, not knowing whether it was a propitious moment to put in his appeal for a photograph. "Well, sir," he said, "you know Clyde wants me to take away all I can of it." Doctor Lombard eyed him sardonically. "You're welcome to take away all you can carry," he replied; adding, as he turned to his daughter: "That is, if he has your permission, Sybilla." The girl rose without a word, and laying aside her work, took a key from a secret drawer in one of the cabinets, while the doctor continued in the same note of grim jocularity: "For you must know that the picture is not mine -- it is my daughter's." He followed with evident amusement the surprised glance which Wyant turned on the young girl's impassive figure. "Sybilla," he pursued, "is a votary of the arts; she has inherited her fond father's passion for the unattainable. Luckily, however, she also recently inherited a tidy legacy from her grandmother; and having seen the Leonardo, on which its discoverer had placed a price far beyond my reach, she took a step which deserves to go down to history: she invested her whole inheritance in the purchase of the picture, thus enabling me to spend my closing years in communion with one of the world's masterpieces. My dear sir, could Antigone do more?" The object of this strange eulogy had meanwhile drawn aside one of the tapestry hangings, and fitted her key into a concealed door. "Come," said Doctor Lombard, "let us go before the light fails us." Wyant glanced at Mrs. Lombard, who continued to knit impassively. "No, no," said his host, "my wife will not come with us. You might not suspect it from her conversation, but my wife has no feeling for art -- Italian art, that is; for no one is fonder of our early Victorian school." "Frith's Railway Station, you know," said Mrs. Lombard, smiling. "I like an animated picture." Miss Lombard, who had unlocked the door, held back the tapestry to let her father and Wyant pass out; then she followed them down a narrow stone passage with another door at its end. This door was iron- barred, and Wyant noticed that it had a complicated patent lock. The girl fitted another key into the lock, and Doctor Lombard led the way into a small room. The dark panelling of this apartment was irradiated by streams of yellow light slanting through the disbanded thunder clouds, and in the central brightness hung a picture concealed by a curtain of faded velvet. "A little too bright, Sybilla," said Doctor Lombard. His face had grown solemn, and his mouth twitched nervously as his daughter drew a linen drapery across the upper part of the window. "That will do -- that will do." He turned impressively to Wyant. "Do you see the pomegranate bud in this rug? Place yourself there -- keep your left foot on it, please. And now, Sybilla, draw the cord." Miss Lombard advanced and placed her hand on a cord hidden behind the velvet curtain. "Ah," said the doctor, "one moment: I should like you, while looking at the picture, to have in mind a few lines of verse. Sybilla --" Without the slightest change of countenance, and with a promptness which proved her to be prepared for the request, Miss Lombard began to recite, in a full round voice like her mother's, St. Bernard's invocation to the Virgin, in the thirty-third canto of the Paradise. "Thank you, my dear," said her father, drawing a deep breath as she ended. "That unapproachable combination of vowel sounds prepares one better than anything I know for the contemplation of the picture." As he spoke the folds of velvet slowly parted, and the Leonardo appeared in its frame of tarnished gold: From the nature of Miss Lombard's recitation Wyant had expected a sacred subject, and his surprise was therefore great as the composition was gradually revealed by the widening division of the curtain. In the background a steel-colored river wound through a pale calcareous landscape; while to the left, on a lonely peak, a crucified Christ hung livid against indigo clouds. The central figure of the foreground, however, was that of a woman seated in an antique chair of marble with bas-reliefs of dancing maenads. Her feet rested on a meadow sprinkled with minute wild-flowers, and her attitude of smiling majesty recalled that of Dosso Dossi's Circe. She wore a red robe, flowing in closely fluted lines from under a fancifully embroidered cloak. Above her high forehead the crinkled golden hair flowed sideways beneath a veil; one hand drooped on the arm of her chair; the other held up an inverted human skull, into which a young Dionysus, smooth, brown and sidelong as the St. John of the Louvre, poured a stream of wine from a high-poised flagon. At the lady's feet lay the symbols of art and luxury: a flute and a roll of music, a platter heaped with grapes and roses, the torso of a Greek statuette, and a bowl overflowing with coins and jewels; behind her, on the chalky hilltop, hung the crucified Christ. A scroll in a corner of the foreground bore the legend: Lux Mundi. Wyant, emerging from the first plunge of wonder, turned inquiringly toward his companions. Neither had moved. Miss Lombard stood with her hand on the cord, her lids lowered, her mouth drooping; the doctor, his strange Thoth-like profile turned toward his guest, was still lost in rapt contemplation of his treasure. Wyant addressed the young girl. "You are fortunate," he said, "to be the possessor of anything so perfect." "It is considered very beautiful," she said coldly. "Beautiful -- beautiful!" the doctor burst out. "Ah, the poor, worn out, over-worked word! There are no adjectives in the language fresh enough to describe such pristine brilliancy; all their brightness has been worn off by misuse. Think of the things that have been called beautiful, and then look atthat!" "It is worthy of a new vocabulary," Wyant agreed. "Yes," Doctor Lombard continued, "my daughter is indeed fortunate. She has chosen what Catholics call the higher life -- the counsel of perfection. What other private person enjoys the same opportunity of understanding the master? Who else lives under the same roof with an untouched masterpiece of Leonardo's? Think of the happiness of being always under the influence of such a creation; of living into it; of partaking of it in daily and hourly communion! This room is a chapel; the sight of that picture is a sacrament. What an atmosphere for a young life to unfold itself in! My daughter is singularly blessed. Sybilla, point out some of the details to Mr. Wyant; I see that he will appreciate them." The girl turned her dense blue eyes toward Wyant; then, glancing away from him, she pointed to the canvas. "Notice the modeling of the left hand," she began in a monotonous voice; "it recalls the hand of the Mona Lisa. The head of the naked genius will remind you of that of the St. John of the Louvre, but it is more purely pagan and is turned a little less to the right. The embroidery on the cloak is symbolic: you will see that the roots of this plant have burst through the vase. This recalls the famous definition of Hamlet's character in Wilhelm Meister. Here are the mystic rose, the flame, and the serpent, emblem of eternity. Some of the other symbols we have not yet been able to decipher." Wyant watched her curiously; she seemed to be reciting a lesson. "And the picture itself?" he said. "How do you explain that? Lux Mundi -- what a curious device to connect with such a subject! What can it mean?" Miss Lombard dropped her eyes: the answer was evidently not included in her lesson. "What, indeed?" the doctor interposed. "What does life mean? As one may define it in a hundred different ways, so one may find a hundred different meanings in this picture. Its symbolism is as many-faceted as a well-cut diamond. Who, for instance, is that divine lady? Is it she who is the true Lux Mundi -- the light reflected from jewels and young eyes, from polished marble and clear waters and statues of bronze? Or is that the Light of the World, extinguished on yonder stormy hill, and is this lady the Pride of Life, feasting blindly on the wine of iniquity, with her back turned to the light which has shone for her in vain? Something of both these meanings may be traced in the picture; but to me it symbolizes rather the central truth of existence: that all that is raised in incorruption is sown in corruption; art, beauty, love, religion; that all our wine is drunk out of skulls, and poured for us by the mysterious genius of a remote and cruel past." The doctor's face blazed: his bent figure seemed to straighten itself and become taller. "Ah," he cried, growing more dithyrambic, "how lightly you ask what it means! How confidently you expect an answer! Yet here am I who have given my life to the study of the Renaissance; who have violated its tomb, laid open its dead body, and traced the course of every muscle, bone, and artery; who have sucked its very soul from the pages of poets and humanists; who have wept and believed with Joachim of Flora, smiled and doubted with AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini; who have patiently followed to its source the least inspiration of the masters, and groped in neolithic caverns and Babylonian ruins for the first unfolding tendrils of the arabesques of Mantegna and Crivelli; and I tell you that I stand abashed and ignorant before the mystery of this picture. It means nothing -- it means all things. It may represent the period which saw its creation; it may represent all ages past and to come. There are volumes of meaning in the tiniest emblem on the lady's cloak; the blossoms of its border are rooted in the deepest soil of myth and tradition. Don't ask what it means, young man, but bow your head in thankfulness for having seen it!" Miss Lombard laid her hand on his arm. "Don't excite yourself, father," she said in the detached tone of a professional nurse. He answered with a despairing gesture. "Ah, it's easy for you to talk. You have years and years to spend with it; I am an old man, and every moment counts!" "It's bad for you," she repeated with gentle obstinacy. The doctor's sacred fury had in fact burnt itself out. He dropped into a seat with dull eyes and slackening lips, and his daughter drew the curtain across the picture. Wyant turned away reluctantly. He felt that his opportunity was slipping from him, yet he dared not refer to Clyde's wish for a photograph. He now understood the meaning of the laugh with which Doctor Lombard had given him leave to carry away all the details he could remember. The picture was so dazzling, so unexpected, so crossed with elusive and contradictory suggestions, that the most alert observer, when placed suddenly before it, must lose his coordinating faculty in a sense of confused wonder. Yet how valuable to Clyde the record of such a work would be! In some ways it seemed to be the summing up of the master's thought, the key to his enigmatic philosophy. The doctor had risen and was walking slowly toward the door. His daughter unlocked it, and Wyant followed them back in silence to the room in which they had left Mrs. Lombard. That lady was no longer there, and he could think of no excuse for lingering. He thanked the doctor, and turned to Miss Lombard, who stood in the middle of the room as though awaiting farther orders. "It is very good of you," he said, "to allow one even a glimpse of such a treasure." She looked at him with her odd directness. "You will come again?" she said quickly; and turning to her father she added: "You know what Professor Clyde asked. This gentleman cannot give him any account of the picture without seeing it again." Doctor Lombard glanced at her vaguely; he was still like a person in a trance. "Eh?" he said, rousing himself with an effort. "I said, father, that Mr. Wyant must see the picture again if he is to tell Professor Clyde about it," Miss Lombard repeated with extraordinary precision of tone. Wyant was silent. He had the puzzled sense that his wishes were being divined and gratified for reasons with which he was in no way connected. "Well, well," the doctor muttered, "I don't say no -- I don't say no. I know what Clyde wants -- I don't refuse to help him." He turned to Wyant. "You may come again -- you may make notes," he added with a sudden effort. "Jot down what occurs to you. I'm willing to concede that." Wyant again caught the girl's eye, but its emphatic message perplexed him. "You're very good," he said tentatively, "but the fact is the picture is so mysterious -- so full of complicated detail -- that I'm afraid no notes I could make would serve Clyde's purpose as well as -- as a photograph, say. If you would allow me --" Miss Lombard's brow darkened, and her father raised his head furiously. "A photograph? A photograph, did you say? Good God, man, not ten people have been allowed to set foot in that room! A photograph?" Wyant saw his mistake, but saw also that he had gone too far to retreat. "I know, sir, from what Clyde has told me, that you object to having any reproduction of the picture published; but he hoped you might let me take a photograph for his personal use -- not to be reproduced in his book, but simply to give him something to work by. I should take the photograph myself, and the negative would of course be yours. If you wished it, only one impression would be struck off, and that one Clyde could return to you when he had done with it." Doctor Lombard interrupted him with a snarl. "When he had done with it? Just so: I thank thee for that word! When it had been re-photographed, drawn, traced, autotyped, passed about from hand to hand, defiled by every ignorant eye in England, vulgarized by the blundering praise of every art-scribbler in Europe! Bah! I'd as soon give you the picture itself: why don't you ask for that?" "Well, sir," said Wyant calmly, "if you will trust me with it, I'll engage to take it safely to England and back, and to let no eye but Clyde's see it while it is out of your keeping." The doctor received this remarkable proposal in silence; then he burst into a laugh. "Upon my soul!" he said with sardonic good humor. It was Miss Lombard's turn to look perplexedly at Wyant. His last words and her father's unexpected reply had evidently carried her beyond her depth. "Well, sir, am I to take the picture?" Wyant smilingly pursued. "No, young man; nor a photograph of it. Nor a sketch, either; mind that, -- nothing that can be reproduced. Sybilla," he cried with sudden passion, "swear to me that the picture shall never be reproduced! No photograph, no sketch -- now or afterward. Do you hear me?" "Yes, father," said the girl quietly. "The vandals," he muttered, "the desecrators of beauty; if I thought it would ever get into their hands I'd burn it first, by God!" He turned to Wyant, speaking more quietly. "I said you might come back -- I never retract what I say. But you must give me your word that no one but Clyde shall see the notes you make." Wyant was growing warm. "If you won't trust me with a photograph I wonder you trust me not to show my notes!" he exclaimed. The doctor looked at him with a malicious smile. "Humph!" he said; "would they be of much use to anybody?" Wyant saw that he was losing ground and controlled his impatience. "To Clyde, I hope, at any rate," he answered, holding out his hand. The doctor shook it without a trace of resentment, and Wyant added: "When shall I come, sir?" "To-morrow -- to-morrow morning," cried Miss Lombard, speaking suddenly. She looked fixedly at her father, and he shrugged his shoulders. "The picture is hers," he said to Wyant. In the ante-chamber the young man was met by the woman who had admitted him. She handed him his hat and stick, and turned to unbar the door. As the bolt slipped back he felt a touch on his arm. "You have a letter?" she said in a low tone. "A letter?" He stared. "What letter?" She shrugged her shoulders, and drew back to let him pass.

II

As Wyant emerged from the house he paused once more to glance up at its scarred brick facade. The marble hand drooped tragically above the entrance: in the waning light it seemed to have relaxed into the passiveness of despair, and Wyant stood musing on its hidden meaning. But the Dead Hand was not the only mysterious thing about Doctor Lombard's house. What were the relations between Miss Lombard and her father? Above all, between Miss Lombard and her picture? She did not look like a person capable of a disinterested passion for the arts; and there had been moments when it struck Wyant that she hated the picture. The sky at the end of the street was flooded with turbulent yellow light, and the young man turned his steps toward the church of San Domenico, in the hope of catching the lingering brightness on Sodoma's St. Catherine. The great bare aisles were almost dark when he entered, and he had to grope his way to the chapel steps. Under the momentary evocation of the sunset, the saint's figure emerged pale and swooning from the dusk, and the warm light gave a sensual tinge to her ecstasy. The flesh seemed to glow and heave, the eyelids to tremble; Wyant stood fascinated by the accidental collaboration of light and color. Suddenly he noticed that something white had fluttered to the ground at his feet. He stooped and picked up a small thin sheet of note-paper, folded and sealed like an old-fashioned letter, and bearing the superscription: -- To the Count Ottaviano Celsi. Wyant stared at this mysterious document. Where had it come from? He was distinctly conscious of having seen it fall through the air, close to his feet. He glanced up at the dark ceiling of the chapel; then he turned and looked about the church. There was only one figure in it, that of a man who knelt near the high altar. Suddenly Wyant recalled the question of Doctor Lombard's maidservant. Was this the letter she had asked for? Had he been unconsciously carrying it about with him all the afternoon? Who was Count Ottaviano Celsi, and how came Wyant to have been chosen to act as that nobleman's ambulant letter-box? Wyant laid his hat and stick on the chapel steps and began to explore his pockets, in the irrational hope of finding there some clue to the mystery; but they held nothing which he had not himself put there, and he was reduced to wondering how the letter, supposing some unknown hand to have bestowed it on him, had happened to fall out while he stood motionless before the picture. At this point he was disturbed by a step on the floor of the aisle, and turning, he saw his lustrous-eyed neighbor of the table d'hote. The young man bowed and waved an apologetic hand. "I do not intrude?" he inquired suavely. Without waiting for a reply, he mounted the steps of the chapel, glancing about him with the affable air of an afternoon caller. "I see," he remarked with a smile, "that you know the hour at which our saint should be visited." Wyant agreed that the hour was indeed felicitous. The stranger stood beamingly before the picture. "What grace! What poetry!" he murmured, apostrophizing the St. Catherine, but letting his glance slip rapidly about the chapel as he spoke. Wyant, detecting the manoeuvre, murmured a brief assent. "But it is cold here -- mortally cold; you do not find it so?" The intruder put on his hat. "It is permitted at this hour -- when the church is empty. And you, my dear sir -- do you not feel the dampness? You are an artist, are you not? And to artists it is permitted to cover the head when they are engaged in the study of the paintings." He darted suddenly toward the steps and bent over Wyant's hat. "Permit me -- cover yourself!" he said a moment later, holding out the hat with an ingratiating gesture. A light flashed on Wyant. "Perhaps," he said, looking straight at the young man, "you will tell me your name. My own is Wyant." The stranger, surprised, but not disconcerted, drew forth a coroneted card, which he offered with a low bow. On the card was engraved: -- Il Conte Ottaviano Celsi. "I am much obliged to you," said Wyant; "and I may as well tell you that the letter which you apparently expected to find in the lining of my hat is not there, but in my pocket." He drew it out and handed it to its owner, who had grown very pale. "And now," Wyant continued, "you will perhaps be good enough to tell me what all this means." There was no mistaking the effect produced on Count Ottaviano by this request. His lips moved, but he achieved only an ineffectual smile. "I suppose you know," Wyant went on, his anger rising at the sight of the other's discomfiture, "that you have taken an unwarrantable liberty. I don't yet understand what part I have been made to play, but it's evident that you have made use of me to serve some purpose of your own, and I propose to know the reason why." Count Ottaviano advanced with an imploring gesture. "Sir," he pleaded, "you permit me to speak?" "I expect you to," cried Wyant. "But not here," he added, hearing the clank of the verger's keys. "It is growing dark, and we shall be turned out in a few minutes." He walked across the church, and Count Ottaviano followed him out into the deserted square. "Now," said Wyant, pausing on the steps. The Count, who had regained some measure of self-possession, began to speak in a high key, with an accompaniment of conciliatory gesture. "My dear sir -- my dear Mr. Wyant -- you find me in an abominable position -- that, as a man of honor, I immediately confess. I have taken advantage of you -- yes! I have counted on your amiability, your chivalry -- too far, perhaps? I confess it! But what could I do? It was to oblige a lady" -- he laid a hand on his heart --"a lady whom I would die to serve!" He went on with increasing volubility, his deliberate English swept away by a torrent of Italian, through which Wyant, with some difficulty, struggled to a comprehension of the case. Count Ottaviano, according to his own statement, had come to Siena some months previously, on business connected with his mother's property; the paternal estate being near Orvieto, of which ancient city his father was syndic. Soon after his arrival in Siena the young Count had met the incomparable daughter of Doctor Lombard, and falling deeply in love with her, had prevailed on his parents to ask her hand in marriage. Doctor Lombard had not opposed his suit, but when the question of settlements arose it became known that Miss Lombard, who was possessed of a small property in her own right, had a short time before invested the whole amount in the purchase of the Bergamo Leonardo. Thereupon Count Ottaviano's parents had politely suggested that she should sell the picture and thus recover her independence; and this proposal being met by a curt refusal from Doctor Lombard, they had withdrawn their consent to their son's marriage. The young lady's attitude had hitherto been one of passive submission; she was horribly afraid of her father, and would never venture openly to oppose him; but she had made known to Ottaviano her intention of not giving him up, of waiting patiently till events should take a more favorable turn. She seemed hardly aware, the Count said with a sigh, that the means of escape lay in her own hands; that she was of age, and had a right to sell the picture, and to marry without asking her father's consent. Meanwhile her suitor spared no pains to keep himself before her, to remind her that he, too, was waiting and would never give her up. Doctor Lombard, who suspected the young man of trying to persuade Sybilla to sell the picture, had forbidden the lovers to meet or to correspond; they were thus driven to clandestine communication, and had several times, the Count ingenuously avowed, made use of the doctor's visitors as a means of exchanging letters. "And you told the visitors to ring twice?" Wyant interposed. The young man extended his hands in a deprecating gesture. Could Mr. Wyant blame him? He was young, he was ardent, he was enamored! The young lady had done him the supreme honor of avowing her attachment, of pledging her unalterable fidelity; should he suffer his devotion to be outdone? But his purpose in writing to her, he admitted, was not merely to reiterate his fidelity; he was trying by every means in his power to induce her to sell the picture. He had organized a plan of action; every detail was complete; if she would but have the courage to carry out his instructions he would answer for the result. His idea was that she should secretly retire to a convent of which his aunt was the Mother Superior, and from that stronghold should transact the sale of the Leonardo. He had a purchaser ready, who was willing to pay a large sum; a sum, Count Ottaviano whispered, considerably in excess of the young lady's original inheritance; once the picture sold, it could, if necessary, be removed by force from Doctor Lombard's house, and his daughter, being safely in the convent, would be spared the painful scenes incidental to the removal. Finally, if Doctor Lombard were vindictive enough to refuse his consent to her marriage, she had only to make a sommation respectueuse, and at the end of the prescribed delay no power on earth could prevent her becoming the wife of Count Ottaviano. Wyant's anger had fallen at the recital of this simple romance. It was absurd to be angry with a young man who confided his secrets to the first stranger he met in the streets, and placed his hand on his heart whenever he mentioned the name of his betrothed. The easiest way out of the business was to take it as a joke. Wyant had played the wall to this new Pyramus and Thisbe, and was philosophic enough to laugh at the part he had unwittingly performed. He held out his hand with a smile to Count Ottaviano. "I won't deprive you any longer," he said, "of the pleasure of reading your letter." "Oh, sir, a thousand thanks! And when you return to the casa Lombard, you will take a message from me -- the letter she expected this afternoon?" "The letter she expected?" Wyant paused. "No, thank you. I thought you understood that where I come from we don't do that kind of thing -- knowingly." "But, sir, to serve a young lady!" "I'm sorry for the young lady, if what you tell me is true" -- the Count's expressive hands resented the doubt --"but remember that if I am under obligations to any one in this matter, it is to her father, who has admitted me to his house and has allowed me to see his picture." "His picture? Hers!" "Well, the house is his, at all events." "Unhappily -- since to her it is a dungeon!" "Why doesn't she leave it, then?" exclaimed Wyant impatiently. The Count clasped his hands. "Ah, how you say that -- with what force, with what virility! If you would but say it to her in that tone -- you, her countryman! She has no one to advise her; the mother is an idiot; the father is terrible; she is in his power; it is my belief that he would kill her if she resisted him. Mr. Wyant, I tremble for her life while she remains in that house!" "Oh, come," said Wyant lightly, "they seem to understand each other well enough. But in any case, you must see that I can't interfere -- at least you would if you were an Englishman," he added with an escape of contempt.

III

Wyant's affiliations in Siena being restricted to an acquaintance with his land-lady, he was forced to apply to her for the verification of Count Ottaviano's story. The young nobleman had, it appeared, given a perfectly correct account of his situation. His father, Count Celsi-Mongirone, was a man of distinguished family and some wealth. He was syndic of Orvieto, and lived either in that town or on his neighboring estate of Mongirone. His wife owned a large property near Siena, and Count Ottaviano, who was the second son, came there from time to time to look into its management. The eldest son was in the army, the youngest in the Church; and an aunt of Count Ottaviano's was Mother Superior of the Visitandine convent in Siena. At one time it had been said that Count Ottaviano, who was a most amiable and accomplished young man, was to marry the daughter of the strange Englishman, Doctor Lombard, but difficulties having arisen as to the adjustment of the young lady's dower, Count Celsi- Mongirone had very properly broken off the match. It was sad for the young man, however, who was said to be deeply in love, and to find frequent excuses for coming to Siena to inspect his mother's estate. Viewed in the light of Count Ottaviano's personality the story had a tinge of opera bouffe; but the next morning, as Wyant mounted the stairs of the House of the Dead Hand, the situation insensibly assumed another aspect. It was impossible to take Doctor Lombard lightly; and there was a suggestion of fatality in the appearance of his gaunt dwelling. Who could tell amid what tragic records of domestic tyranny and fluttering broken purposes the little drama of Miss Lombard's fate was being played out? Might not the accumulated influences of such a house modify the lives within it in a manner unguessed by the inmates of a suburban villa with sanitary plumbing and a telephone? One person, at least, remained unperturbed by such fanciful problems; and that was Mrs. Lombard, who, at Wyant's entrance, raised a placidly wrinkled brow from her knitting. The morning was mild, and her chair had been wheeled into a bar of sunshine near the window, so that she made a cheerful spot of prose in the poetic gloom of her surroundings. "What a nice morning!" she said; "it must be delightful weather at Bonchurch." Her dull blue glance wandered across the narrow street with its threatening house fronts, and fluttered back baffled, like a bird with clipped wings. It was evident, poor lady, that she had never seen beyond the opposite houses. Wyant was not sorry to find her alone. Seeing that she was surprised at his reappearance he said at once: "I have come back to study Miss Lombard's picture." "Oh, the picture --" Mrs. Lombard's face expressed a gentle disappointment, which might have been boredom in a person of acuter sensibilities. "It's an original Leonardo, you know," she said mechanically. "And Miss Lombard is very proud of it, I suppose? She seems to have inherited her father's love for art." Mrs. Lombard counted her stitches, and he went on: "It's unusual in so young a girl. Such tastes generally develop later." Mrs. Lombard looked up eagerly. "That's what I say! I was quite different at her age, you know. I liked dancing, and doing a pretty bit of fancy-work. Not that I couldn't sketch, too; I had a master down from London. My aunts have some of my crayons hung up in their drawing-room now -- I did a view of Kenilworth which was thought pleasing. But I liked a picnic, too, or a pretty walk through the woods with young people of my own age. I say it's more natural, Mr. Wyant; one may have a feeling for art, and do crayons that are worth framing, and yet not give up everything else. I was taught that there were other things." Wyant, half-ashamed of provoking these innocent confidences, could not resist another question. "And Miss Lombard cares for nothing else?" Her mother looked troubled. "Sybilla is so clever -- she says I don't understand. You know how self-confident young people are! My husband never said that of me, now -- he knows I had an excellent education. My aunts were very particular; I was brought up to have opinions, and my husband has always respected them. He says himself that he wouldn't for the world miss hearing my opinion on any subject; you may have noticed that he often refers to my tastes. He has always respected my preference for living in England; he likes to hear me give my reasons for it. He is so much interested in my ideas that he often says he knows just what I am going to say before I speak. But Sybilla does not care for what I think --" At this point Doctor Lombard entered. He glanced sharply at Wyant. "The servant is a fool; she didn't tell me you were here." His eye turned to his wife. "Well, my dear, what have you been telling Mr. Wyant? About the aunts at Bonchurch, I'll be bound!" Mrs. Lombard looked triumphantly at Wyant, and her husband rubbed his hooked fingers, with a smile. "Mrs. Lombard's aunts are very superior women. They subscribe to the circulating library, and borrow Good Words and the Monthly Packet from the curate's wife across the way. They have the rector to tea twice a year, and keep a page-boy, and are visited by two baronets' wives. They devoted themselves to the education of their orphan niece, and I think I may say without boasting that Mrs. Lombard's conversation shows marked traces of the advantages she enjoyed." Mrs. Lombard colored with pleasure. "I was telling Mr. Wyant that my aunts were very particular." "Quite so, my dear; and did you mention that they never sleep in anything but linen, and that Miss Sophia puts away the furs and blankets every spring with her own hands? Both those facts are interesting to the student of human nature." Doctor Lombard glanced at his watch. "But we are missing an incomparable moment; the light is perfect at this hour." Wyant rose, and the doctor led him through the tapestried door and down the passageway. The light was, in fact, perfect, and the picture shone with an inner radiancy, as though a lamp burned behind the soft screen of the lady's flesh. Every detail of the foreground detached itself with jewel-like precision. Wyant noticed a dozen accessories which had escaped him on the previous day. He drew out his note-book, and the doctor, who had dropped his sardonic grin for a look of devout contemplation, pushed a chair forward, and seated himself on a carved settle against the wall. "Now, then," he said, "tell Clyde what you can; but the letter killeth." He sank down, his hands hanging on the arm of the settle like the claws of a dead bird, his eyes fixed on Wyant's notebook with the obvious intention of detecting any attempt at a surreptitious sketch. Wyant, nettled at this surveillance, and disturbed by the speculations which Doctor Lombard's strange household excited, sat motionless for a few minutes, staring first at the picture and then at the blank pages of the note-book. The thought that Doctor Lombard was enjoying his discomfiture at length roused him, and he began to write. He was interrupted by a knock on the iron door. Doctor Lombard rose to unlock it, and his daughter entered. She bowed hurriedly to Wyant, without looking at him. "Father, had you forgotten that the man from Monte Amiato was to come back this morning with an answer about the bas-relief? He is here now; he says he can't wait." "The devil!" cried her father impatiently. "Didn't you tell him --" "Yes; but he says he can't come back. If you want to see him you must come now." "Then you think there's a chance? --" She nodded. He turned and looked at Wyant, who was writing assiduously. "You will stay here, Sybilla; I shall be back in a moment." He hurried out, locking the door behind him. Wyant had looked up, wondering if Miss Lombard would show any surprise at being locked in with him; but it was his turn to be surprised, for hardly had they heard the key withdrawn when she moved close to him, her small face pale and tumultuous. "I arranged it -- I must speak to you," she gasped. "He'll be back in five minutes." Her courage seemed to fail, and she looked at him helplessly. Wyant had a sense of stepping among explosives. He glanced about him at the dusky vaulted room, at the haunting smile of the strange picture overhead, and at the pink-and-white girl whispering of conspiracies in a voice meant to exchange platitudes with a curate. "How can I help you?" he said with a rush of compassion. "Oh, if you would! I never have a chance to speak to any one; it's so difficult -- he watches me -- he'll be back immediately." "Try to tell me what I can do." "I don't dare; I feel as if he were behind me." She turned away, fixing her eyes on the picture. A sound startled her. "There he comes, and I haven't spoken! It was my only chance; but it bewilders me so to be hurried." "I don't hear any one," said Wyant, listening. "Try to tell me." "How can I make you understand? It would take so long to explain." She drew a deep breath, and then with a plunge --"Will you come here again this afternoon -- at about five?" she whispered. "Come here again?" "Yes -- you can ask to see the picture, -- make some excuse. He will come with you, of course; I will open the door for you -- and -- and lock you both in" -- she gasped. "Lock us in?" "You see? You understand? It's the only way for me to leave the house -- if I am ever to do it" -- She drew another difficult breath. "The key will be returned -- by a safe person -- in half an hour, -- perhaps sooner --" She trembled so much that she was obliged to lean against the settle for support. "Wyant looked at her steadily; he was very sorry for her. "I can't, Miss Lombard," he said at length. "You can't?" "I'm sorry; I must seem cruel; but consider --" He was stopped by the futility of the word: as well ask a hunted rabbit to pause in its dash for a hole! Wyant took her hand; it was cold and nerveless. "I will serve you in any way I can; but you must see that this way is impossible. Can't I talk to you again? Perhaps --" "Oh," she cried, starting up, "there he comes!" Doctor Lombard's step sounded in the passage. Wyant held her fast. "Tell me one thing: he won't let you sell the picture?" "No -- hush!" "Make no pledges for the future, then; promise me that." "The future?" "In case he should die: your father is an old man. You haven't promised?" She shook her head. "Don't, then; remember that." She made no answer, and the key turned in the lock. As he passed out of the house, its scowling cornice and facade of ravaged brick looked down on him with the startlingness of a strange face, seen momentarily in a crowd, and impressing itself on the brain as part of an inevitable future. Above the doorway, the marble hand reached out like the cry of an imprisoned anguish. Wyant turned away impatiently. "Rubbish!" he said to himself. "She isn't walled in; she can get out if she wants to."

IV

Wyant had any number of plans for coming to Miss Lombard's aid: he was elaborating the twentieth when, on the same afternoon, he stepped into the express train for Florence. By the time the train reached Certaldo he was convinced that, in thus hastening his departure, he had followed the only reasonable course; at Empoli, he began to reflect that the priest and the Levite had probably justified themselves in much the same manner. A month later, after his return to England, he was unexpectedly relieved from these alternatives of extenuation and approval. A paragraph in the morning paper announced the sudden death of Doctor Lombard, the distinguished English dilettante who had long resided in Siena. Wyant's justification was complete. Our blindest impulses become evidence of perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events. Wyant could now comfortably speculate on the particular complications from which his foresight had probably saved him. The climax was unexpectedly dramatic. Miss Lombard, on the brink of a step which, whatever its issue, would have burdened her with retrospective compunction, had been set free before her suitor's ardor could have had time to cool, and was now doubtless planning a life of domestic felicity on the proceeds of the Leonardo. One thing, however, struck Wyant as odd -- he saw no mention of the sale of the picture. He had scanned the papers for an immediate announcement of its transfer to one of the great museums; but presently concluding that Miss Lombard, out of filial piety, had wished to avoid an appearance of unseemly haste in the disposal of her treasure, he dismissed the matter from his mind. Other affairs happened to engage him; the months slipped by, and gradually the lady and the picture dwelt less vividly in his mind. It was not till five or six years later, when chance took him again to Siena, that the recollection started from some inner fold of memory. He found himself, as it happened, at the head of Doctor Lombard's street, and glancing down that grim thoroughfare, caught an oblique glimpse of the doctor's house front, with the Dead Hand projecting above its threshold. The sight revived his interest, and that evening, over an admirable frittata, he questioned his landlady about Miss Lombard's marriage. "The daughter of the English doctor? But she has never married, signore." "Never married? What, then, became of Count Ottaviano?" "For a long time he waited; but last year he married a noble lady of the Maremma." "But what happened -- why was the marriage broken?" The landlady enacted a pantomime of baffled interrogation. "And Miss Lombard still lives in her father's house?" "Yes, signore; she is still there." "And the Leonardo --" "The Leonardo, also, is still there." The next day, as Wyant entered the House of the Dead Hand, he remembered Count Ottaviano's injunction to ring twice, and smiled mournfully to think that so much subtlety had been vain. But what could have prevented the marriage? If Doctor Lombard's death had been long delayed, time might have acted as a dissolvent, or the young lady's resolve have failed; but it seemed impossible that the white heat of ardor in which Wyant had left the lovers should have cooled in a few short weeks. As he ascended the vaulted stairway the atmosphere of the place seemed a reply to his conjectures. The same numbing air fell on him, like an emanation from some persistent will-power, a something fierce and imminent which might reduce to impotence every impulse within its range. Wyant could almost fancy a hand on his shoulder, guiding him upward with the ironical intent of confronting him with the evidence of its work. A strange servant opened the door, and he was presently introduced to the tapestried room, where, from their usual seats in the window, Mrs. Lombard and her daughter advanced to welcome him with faint ejaculations of surprise. Both had grown oddly old, but in a dry, smooth way, as fruits might shrivel on a shelf instead of ripening on the tree. Mrs. Lombard was still knitting, and pausing now and then to warm her swollen hands above the brazier; and Miss Lombard, in rising, had laid aside a strip of needle-work which might have been the same on which Wyant had first seen her engaged. Their visitor inquired discreetly how they had fared in the interval, and learned that they had thought of returning to England, but had somehow never done so. "I am sorry not to see my aunts again," Mrs. Lombard said resignedly; "but Sybilla thinks it best that we should not go this year." "Next year, perhaps," murmured Miss Lombard, in a voice which seemed to suggest that they had a great waste of time to fill. She had returned to her seat, and sat bending over her work. Her hair enveloped her head in the same thick braids, but the rose color of her cheeks had turned to blotches of dull red, like some pigment which has darkened in drying. "And Professor Clyde -- is he well?" Mrs. Lombard asked affably; continuing, as her daughter raised a startled eye: "Surely, Sybilla, Mr. Wyant was the gentleman who was sent by Professor Clyde to see the Leonardo?" Miss Lombard was silent, but Wyant hastened to assure the elder lady of his friend's well-being. "Ah -- perhaps, then, he will come back some day to Siena," she said, sighing. Wyant declared that it was more than likely; and there ensued a pause, which he presently broke by saying to Miss Lombard: "And you still have the picture?" She raised her eyes and looked at him. "Should you like to see it?" she asked. On his assenting, she rose, and extracting the same key from the same secret drawer, unlocked the door beneath the tapestry. They walked down the passage in silence, and she stood aside with a grave gesture, making Wyant pass before her into the room. Then she crossed over and drew the curtain back from the picture. The light of the early afternoon poured full on it: its surface appeared to ripple and heave with a fluid splendor. The colors had lost none of their warmth, the outlines none of their pure precision; it seemed to Wyant like some magical flower which had burst suddenly from the mould of darkness and oblivion. He turned to Miss Lombard with a movement of comprehension. "Ah, I understand -- you couldn't part with it, after all!" he cried. "No -- I couldn't part with it," she answered. "It's too beautiful, -- too beautiful," -- he assented. "Too beautiful?" She turned on him with a curious stare. "I have never thought it beautiful, you know." He gave back the stare. "You have never --" She shook her head. "It's not that. I hate it; I've always hated it. But he wouldn't let me -- he will never let me now." Wyant was startled by her use of the present tense. Her look surprised him, too: there was a strange fixity of resentment in her innocuous eye. Was it possible that she was laboring under some delusion? Or did the pronoun not refer to her father? "You mean that Doctor Lombard did not wish you to part with the picture?" "No -- he prevented me; he will always prevent me." There was another pause. "You promised him, then, before his death --" "No; I promised nothing. He died too suddenly to make me." Her voice sank to a whisper. "I was free -- perfectly free -- or I thought I was till I tried." "Till you tried?" "To disobey him -- to sell the picture. Then I found it was impossible. I tried again and again; but he was always in the room with me." She glanced over her shoulder as though she had heard a step; and to Wyant, too, for a moment, the room seemed full of a third presence. "And you can't" -- he faltered, unconsciously dropping his voice to the pitch of hers. She shook her head, gazing at him mystically. "I can't lock him out; I can never lock him out now. I told you I should never have another chance." Wyant felt the chill of her words like a cold breath in his hair. "Oh" -- he groaned; but she cut him off with a grave gesture. "It is too late," she said; "but you ought to have helped me that day."

“The Sexes” Dorothy Parker

The young man with the scenic cravat glanced nervously down the sofa at the girl in the fringed dress. She was examining her handkerchief; it might have been the first one of its kind she had seen, so deep was her interest in its material, form, and possibilities. The young man cleared his throat, without necessity or success, producing a small, syncopated noise. “Want a cigarette?” he said. “No, thank you,” she said. “Thank you ever so much just the same.” “Sorry I’ve only got these kind,” he said. “You got any of your own?” “I really don’t know,” she said. “I probably have, thank you.” “Because if you haven’t,” he said, “it wouldn’t take me a minute to go up to the corner and get you some.” “Oh, thank you, but I wouldn’t have you go to all that trouble for anything,” she said. “It’s awfully sweet of you to think of it. Thank you ever so much.” “Will you for God’s sakes stop thanking me?” he said. “Really,” she said, “I didn’t know I was saying anything out of the way. I’m awfully sorry if I hurt your feelings. I know what it feels like to get your feelings hurt. I’m sure I didn’t realize it was an insult to say ‘thank you’ to a person. I’m not exactly in the habit of having people swear at me because I say ‘thank you’ to them.” “I did not swear at you!” he said. “Oh, you didn’t?” she said. “I see.” “My God,” he said, “all I said, I simply asked you if I couldn’t go out and get you some cigarettes. Is there anything in that to get up in the air about?” “Who’s up in the air?” she said. “I’m sure I didn’t know it was a criminal offense to say I wouldn’t dream of giving you all that trouble. I’m afraid I must be awfully stupid, or something.” “Do you want me to go out and get you some cigarettes; or don’t you?” he said. “Goodness,” she said, “if you want to go so much, please don’t feel you have to stay here. I wouldn’t have you feel you had to stay for anything.” “Ah, don’t be that way, will you?” he said.” “Be what way?” she said. “I’m not being any way.” “What’s the matter?” he said. “Why, nothing,” she said. “Why?” “You’ve been funny all evening,” he said. “Hardly said a word to me, ever since I came in.” “I’m terribly sorry you haven’t been having a good time,” she said. “For goodness’ sakes, don’t feel you have to stay here and be bored. I’m sure there are millions of places you could be having a lot more fun. The only thing, I’m a little bit sorry I didn’t know before, that’s all. When you said you were coming over tonight, I broke a lot of dates to go to the theater and everything. But it doesn’t make a bit of difference. I’d much rather have you go and have a good time. It isn’t very pleasant to sit here and feel you’re boring a person to death.” “I’m not bored!” he said. “I don’t want to go any place! Ah, honey, won’t you tell me what’s the matter? Ah, please.” “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “There isn’t a thing on earth the matter. I don’t know what you mean.” “Yes, you do,” he said. “There’s something the trouble. Is it anything I’ve done, or anything?” “Goodness,” she said, “I’m sure it isn’t any of my business, anything you do. I certainly wouldn’t feel I had any right to criticize.” “Will you stop talking like that?” he said. “Will you, please?” “Talking like what?” she said. “You know,” he said. “That’s the way you were talking over the telephone today, too. You were so snotty when I called you up, I was afraid to talk to you.” “I beg your pardon,” she said. “What did you say I was?” “Well, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to say that. You get me so balled up.” “You see,” she said, “I’m really not in the habit of hearing language like that. I’ve never had a thing like that said to me in my life.” “I told you I was sorry, didn’t I?” he said. “Honest, honey, I didn’t mean it. I don’t know how I came to say a thing like that. Will you excuse me? Please?” “Oh, certainly,” she said. “Goodness, don’t feel you have to apologize to me. It doesn’t make any difference at all. It just seems a little bit funny to have somebody you were in the habit of thinking was a gentleman come to your home and use language like that to you, that’s all. But it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference.” “I guess nothing I say makes any difference to you,” he said. “You seem to be sore at me.” “I’m sore at you?” she said. “I can’t understand what put that idea in your head. Why should I be sore at you?” “That’s what I’m asking you,” he said. “Won’t you tell me what I’ve done? Have I done something to hurt your feelings, honey? The way you were, over the phone, you had me worried all day. I couldn’t do a lick of work.” “I certainly wouldn’t like to feel,” she said, “that I was interfering with your work. I know there are lots of girls that don’t think anything of doing things like that, but I think it’s terrible. It certainly isn’t very nice to sit here and have someone tell you you interfere with his business.” “I didn’t say that!” he said. “I didn’t say it!” “Oh, didn’t you?” she said. “Well, that was the impression I got. It must be my stupidity. “I guess maybe I better go,” he said. “I can’t get right. Everything I say seems to make you sorer and sorer. Would you rather I’d go?” “Please do just exactly whatever you like,” she said. “I’m sure the last thing I want to do is have you stay here when you’d rather be some place else. Why don’t you go some place where you won’t be bored? Why don’t you go up to Florence Leaming’s? I know she’d love to have you.” “I don’t want to go up to Florence Leaming’s!” he said. “What would I want to go up to Florence Leaming’s for? She gives me a pain.” “Oh, really?” she said. “She didn’t seem to be giving you so much of a pain at Elsie’s party last night, I notice. I notice you couldn’t even talk to anybody else, that’s how much of a pain she gave you.” “Yeah, and you know why I was talking to her?” he said. “Why, I suppose you think she’s attractive,” she said. “I suppose some people do. It’s perfectly natural. Some people think she’s quite pretty.” “I don’t know whether she’s pretty or not,” he said. “I wouldn’t know her if I saw her again. Why I was talking to her was you wouldn’t even give me a tumble, last night. I came up and tried to talk to you, and you just said, ‘Oh, how do you do’—just like that, ‘Oh, how do you do’—and you turned right away and wouldn’t look at me.” “I wouldn’t look at you?” she said. “Oh, that’s awfully funny. Oh, that’s marvelous. You don’t mind if I laugh, do you?” “Go ahead and laugh your head off,” he said. “But you wouldn’t.” “Well, the minute you came in the room,” she said, “you started making such a fuss over Florence Leaming, I thought you never wanted to see anybody else. You two seemed to be having such a wonderful time together, goodness knows I wouldn’t have butted in for anything.” “My God,” he said, “this what’s-her-name girl came up and began talking to me before I even saw anybody else, and what could I do? I couldn’t sock her in the nose, could I?” “I certainly didn’t see you try,” she said. “You saw me try to talk to you, didn’t you?” he said. “And what did you do? ‘Oh, how do you do.’ Then this what’s-her-name came up again, and there I was, stuck. Florence Leaming! I think she’s terrible. Know what I think of her? I think she’s a damn little fool. That’s what I think of her.” “Well, of course,” she said, “that’s the impression she always gave me, but I don’t know. I’ve heard people say she’s pretty. Honestly I have.” “Why, she can’t be pretty in the same room with you,” he said. “She has got an awfully funny nose,” she said. “I really feel sorry for a girl with a nose like that.” “She’s got a terrible nose,” he said. “You’ve got a beautiful nose. Gee, you’ve got a pretty nose.” “Oh, I have not,” she said. “You’re crazy.” “And beautiful eyes,” he said, “and beautiful hair and a beautiful mouth. And beautiful hands. Let me have one of the little hands. Ah, look atta little hand! Who’s got the prettiest hands in the world? Who’s the sweetest girl in the world?” “I don’t know,” she said. “Who?” “You don’t know!” he said. “You do so, too, know.” “I do not,” she said. “Who? Florence Leaming?” “Oh, Florence Leaming, my eye!” he said. “Getting sore about Florence Leaming! And me not sleeping all last night and not doing a stroke of work all day because you wouldn’t speak to me! A girl like you getting sore about a girl like Florence Leaming!” “I think you’re just perfectly crazy,” she said. “I was not sore! What on earth ever made you think I was? You’re simply crazy. Ow, my new pearl beads! Wait a second till I take them off. There!”

By Dorotliy Parker

'AZEL MORSE was a large, fair When she had been working in the dress woman of the type that incites some establishment some years she met Herbie men when they use the word "blonde" to Morse. He was thin, quick, attractive, with click their tongues and wag their heads shifting lines about his shiny, brown eyes roguishly. She prided herself upon her and a habit of fiercely biting at the skin small feet and suffered for her vanity, box­ around his finger nails. He drank largely; ing them in snub-toed, high-heeled slippers she found that entertaining. Her habitual of the shortest bearable size. The curious greeting to him was an allusion to his state things about her were her hands, strange of the previous night. terminations to the flabby, white arms splat­ "Oh, what a peach you had," she used tered with pale tan spots—long, quivering to say, through her easy laugh. "I thought hands with deep and convex nails. She I'd die, the way you kept asking the waiter should not have disfigured them with little to dance with you." jewels. She liked him immediately upon their She was not a woman given to recollec­ meeting. She was enormously amused at tions. At her middle thirties, her old days his fast, slurred sentences, his interpolations were a blurred and flickering sequence, an of apt phrases from vaudeville acts and imperfect film, dealing with the actions of comic strips; she thrilled at the feel of his strangers. lean arm tucked firm beneath the sleeve of In her twenties, after the deferred death her coat; she wanted to touch the wet, flat of a hazy widowed mother, she had been em­ surface of his hair. He was as promptly ployed as a model in a wholesale dress es­ drawn to her. They were married six weeks tablishment—it was still the day of the big after they had met. woman, and she was then prettily colored She was delighted at the idea of being a and erect and high-breasted. Her job was bride; coquetted with it, played upon it. not onerous, and she met numbers of men Other offers of marriage she had had, and and spent numbers of evenings with them, not a few of them, but it happened that they laughing at their jokes and telling them she were all from stout, serious men who had loved their neckties. Men liked her, and visited the dress establishment as buyers; she took it for granted that the liking of , men from Des Moines and Houston and many men was a desirable thing. Popularity Chicago and, in her phrase, even funnier seemed to her to be worth all the work that places. There was always something im­ had to be put into its achievement. Men mensely comic to her in the thought of living liked you because you were fun, and when elsewhere than New York. She could not they liked you they took you out, and there regard as serious proposals that she share you were. So, and successfully, she was a western residence. fun. She was a good sport. Men like a She wanted to be married. She was Hear­ good sport. ing thirty now, and she did riot take the years No other form of diversion, simpler or well. She spread and softened, and her more complicated, drew her attention. She darkening hair turned her to inexpert dab- never pondered if she might not be better blings with peroxide. There were times occupied doing something else. Her ideas, when she had little flashes of fear about her or, better, her acceptances, ran right along job. And she had had a couple of thousand with those of the other substantially built evenings of being a good sport among her blondes in whom she found her friends. male acquaintances. She had come to be 639

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 640 THE BOOKMAN more conscientious than spontaneous about "Yeah," Herbie would say. it. She inissed nobody. The old crowd, the Herbie earned enough, and they took a people who had brought her and Herbie little apartment far uptown. There was a together, dropped from their lives, linger- Mission-furnished dining room with a hang­ ingly at first. When she thought of this at ing central light globed in liver-colored all, it was only to consider it fitting. This glass; in the living-room were an "over­ was marriage. This was peace. ^ stuffed suite", a Boston fern and a reproduc­ But the thing was that Herbie was not tion of the Henner Magdalene with the red amused. hair and the blue draperies; the bedroom was For a time, he had enjoyed being alone in gray enamel and old rose, with Herbie's with her. He found the voluntary isolation photograph on Hazel's dressing table and novel and sweet. Then it palled with a fero­ Hazel's likeness on Herbie's chest of drawers.. cious suddenness. It was as if one night, She cooked—and she was a good cook— sitting with her in the steam-heated living and marketed and chatted with the delivery room, he would ask no more; and the next boys and the colored laundress. She loved night he was through and done with the the flat, she loved- her life, she loved Herbie. whole thing. In the first months of their marriage, she He became annoyed by her misty melan­ gave him all the passion she was ever to cholies. At first, when he came home to know. find her softly tired and moody, he kissed She had not realized how tired she was. . her neck and patted her shoulder and begged It was a delight, a new game, a holiday, to , her' to tell her Herbie what was wrong, She give up being a good sport. If her head loved that. But time slid by, and he found ached or her arches throbbed, she complained that there was never anything really, per­ piteously, babyishly. If her mood was quiet, sonally, the matter. she did not talk. If tears came to her eyes, "Ah, for God's sake," he would say. she let them fall. "Crabbing again. All right, sit here and She fell readHy into the habit of tears crab your head off. I'm going out." during the first year of her marriage. Even And he would slam out of the flat and in her good sport days, she had been known come back late and drunk. to weep lavishly and disinterestedly on oc­ She was completely bewildered by what casion. Her behavior at the theatre was a happened to their marriage. First they were standing joke. She could weep at anything lovers; and then, it seemed without transi­ in a play—tiny garments, love both unre­ tion, they were enemies. She never under­ quited and mutual, seduction, purity, faith­ stood it. ful servitors, wedlock, the triangle. There were longer and longer intervals "There goes Haze," her friends would say, I between his leaving his office and his arrival watching her. "She's off again." at the apartment. She went through agonies Wedded and relaxed, she poured her tears of picturing him run over and bleeding, dead freely. To her who had laughed so much and covered with a sheet. Then she lost crying was delicious. All sorrows became her fears for his safety and grew sullen and her sorrows; she was Tenderness. She wounded. When a person wanted to be with would cry long and softly over newspaper a person, he came as soon as possible. She accounts of kidnapped babies, deserted wives, desperately wanted him to want to be with unemployed men, strayed cats, heroic dogs. her; her own hours only marked the time Even when the paper was no longer before till he would come. It was often nearly nine her, her mind revolved upon these things and o'clock before he came home to dinner. Al­ the drops slipped rhythmically over her ways he had had many drinks, and their plump cheeks. effect would die in him, leaving him loud "Honestly," she would say to Herbie, "all and querulous and bristling for affronts. the sadness there is in the world when you He was too nervous, he said, to sit and stop to think about it!" do nothing for an evening. He boasted.

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probably not in all truth, that he had never nothing separate about her days. Like drops read a book in his life. upon a window-pane, they ran together and "What am I expected to do—sit around trickled away. She had been married six this dump on my tail all night?" he would months; then a year; then three years. ask, rhetorically., And again he would slam She had never needed to drink, formerly. out. She could sit for most of a night at a table She did not know what to do. She could where the others were imbibing earnestly not manage him. She could not meet him. and never droop in looks or spirits, nor She fought him furiously. A terrific be bored by the doings of those about her. domesticity had come upon her, and she If she took a cocktail, it was so unusual as would bite and scratch to guard it. She to cause twenty minutes or so of jocular wanted what she called "a nice home". She comment. But now anguish was in her. Fre­ wanted a sober, tender husband, prompt at quently, after a quarrel, Herbie would stay dinner, punctual at work. She wanted out for the night, and she could not learn sweet, comforting evenings. The idea of in­ from him where the time had been spent. timacy with other men was terrible to her; Her heart felt tight and sore in her breast, the thought that Herbie might be seeking and her mind turned like an electric fan. entertainment in other women set her frantic. She hated the taste of liquor. Gin, plain It seemed to her that almost everything or in mixtures, made her promptly sick. After she read—novels from the drug-store lend­ experiment, she found that Scotch whiskey ing library, magazine stories, women's pages . was best for her. She took it without water, in the papers—dealt with wives who lost because that was the quickest way to its their husbands' love. She could bear those, effect. at that, better than accounts of neat, com­ Herbie pressed it on her. He was glad panionable marriage and living happily ever to see her drink. They both felt it might after. restore her high spirits, and their good times She was frightened. Several times when together might again be possible.' Herbie came home in the evening, he found " 'Atta girl," he would approve her. "Let's her determinedly dressed—she had had to see you get boiled, baby." alter those of her clothes that were not new, But it brought them no nearer. When to make them fasten—and rouged. she drank with him, there would be a little "Let's go wild to-night, what do you say?" while of gaiety and then, strangely without she would hail him. "A person's got lots beginning, they would be in a wild quarrel. of time to hang around and do nothing when They would wake in the morning not sure they're dead." what it had all been about, foggy as to what So they would go out, to chop houses and had been said and done, but each deeply in­ the less expensive cabarets. But it turned jured and bitterly resentful. There would out badly. She could no longer find amuse­ be days of vengeful silence. ment in watching Herbie drink. She could There had been a time when they had not laugh at his whimsicalities, she was so made up their quarrels, usually in bed. There tensely counting his indulgences. And she would be kisses and little names and assur­ was unable to keep back her remonstrances ances of fresh starts . . . "Oh, it's going —"Ah, come on. Herb, you've had enough, to be great now. Herb. We'll have swell haven't you? You'll feel something terrible times. I was a crab. I guess I must have in the morning". been tired. But everything's going to be He" would be immediately enraged. All swell. You'll see". right, crab; crab, crab, crab, that was all Now there were no gentle reconciliations. she ever did. What a lousy sport she was! They resumed friendly relations only in the There would be scenes, and one or the other brief magnanimity caused by liquor, before of them would rise and stalk out in fury. more liquor drew them into new battles. The She could not recall the definite day that scenes became more violent. There were she started drinking, herself. There was shouted invectives and pushes, and some-

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times sharp slaps. Once she had a black were left to decide for yourself whether he eye. Herbie was horrified next day at sight was or was not dead. She had an admirer, of it. He did not go to work; he followed Joe, who came to see her almost nightly. her aboutj suggesting remedies and heaping Often he brought several friends with him— dark blame on himself. But after they had "The Boys", they were called. The Boys had a few drinks—"to pull themselves to­ were big, red, good-humored men, perhaps gether"—she made so many wistful refer­ forty-five, perhaps fifty. Mrs. Morse was ences to her bruise that he shouted at her, glad of invitations to join the parties— and rushed out, and was gone for two days. Herbie was scarcely ever at home at night Each time he left the place in a rage, he now. If he did come home, she did not visit threatened never to come back. She did not Mrs. Martin. An evening alone with Herbie believe him, nor did she consider separation. meant inevitably a quarrel, yet she would Somewhere in her head or her heart was the stay with him. There was always her thin lazy, nebulous hope that things would change and wordless idea that, maybe, this night, and she and Herbie settle suddenly into things would begin to be alL right. soothing married life. Here were her home, The Boys brought plenty of liquor along - her furniture, her husband, her station. She with them whenever they came to Mrs. Mar­ summoned no alternatives. tin's. Drinking with them, Mrs. Morse be­ She could no longer bustle and potter. came lively and good-natured and audacious. She had no more vicarious tears; the hot She was quickly popular. When she had drops she shed were for herself. She walked drunk enough to cloud her most recent bat­ ceaselessly about the rooms, her thoughts tle with Herbie, she was excited by their running mechanically round and round approbation. Crab, was she.'' Rotten sport, Herbie. In those days began the hatred was she.'' Well, there were some that thought of being alone that she was never to over­ different. come. You could be by yourself when things \ Ed was one of The Boys. He lived in were all right, but when you were blue you Utica—had "his own business" there, was got the howling horrors. the awed report—^-but he came to New York She commenced drinking alone, little, almost every week. He was married. He short drinks all through the day. It was showed Mrs. Morse the then current photo­ only with Herbie that alcohol made her graphs of Junior and Sister, and she praised nervous and quick in offence. Alone, it them abundantly and sincerely. Soon it was blurred sharp things for her. She lived in accepted by the others that Ed was her a haze of it. Her life took on a dream-like particular friend. quality. Nothing was astonishing. He staked her when they all played poker; A Mrs. Martin moved into the flat across sat next her and occasionally rubbed his the hall. She was a great blonde woman of knee against hers during the game. She forty, a promise in looks of what Mrs. Morse was rather lucky. Frequently she went was to be. They made acquaintance, quickly home with a twenty-dollar bill or a ten-dollar became inseparable. Mrs. Morse spent her bill or a handful of crumpled dollars. She days in the opposite apartment. They drank was glad of them. Herbie. was getting, in her together, to brace themselves after the drinks words, something awful about money. To of the nights before. ask him for it brought an instant row. She never confided her troubles about "What the hell do you do with it?" he Herbie to Mrs. Martin. The subject was would say. "Shoot it all on Scotch.''" too bewildering to her to find comfort in "I try to run this house half-way decent," talk. She let it be assumed that her hus­ she would retort. "Never thought of that, band's business kept him much away. It did you? Oh, no, his lordship couldn't be was not regarded as important; husbands, bothered with that." as such, played'but shadowy parts in Mrs. Again, she could not find a definite day, Martin's circle. to fix the beginning of Ed's proprietorship. Mrs. Martin had no visible spouse; -you It became his custom to kiss her on the

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mouth when he came in, as well as for fare­ highball, poured herself a couple of inches well, and he gave her little quick kisses of of whiskey and drank it. Then she gave approval all through the evening. She. liked herself another portion and brought the this rather more than she disliked it. She glasses into the bedroom. He had strapped never thought of his kisses when she was both suitcases and had put on his hat and not with him. overcoat. He would run his hand lingeringly over He took his highball. her back and shoulders. "Well," he said, and he gave a sudden, "Some dizzy blonde, eh?" he would say. uncertain laugh. "Here's mud in your eye." "Some doll." "Mud in your eye," she said. One afternoon she came home from Mrs. They drank. He put down his glass and Martin's to find Herbie in the bedroom. He took up the heavy suitcase. had been' away for several nights, evidently "Got to get a train around six," he said. on a prolonged drinking bout. His face was She followed him down the hall. There gray, his hands jerked as if they were on was a song, a song that Mrs. Martin played wires. On the bed were two old suitcases, doggedly on the phonograph, running loudly packed high. Only her photograph re­ through her mind. She had never liked the mained on his bureau, and the wide doors thing. of his closet disclosed nothing but coat- "Night and daytime. hangers. Always playtime. "I'm blowing," he said. "I'm through Ain't we got fun?" with the whole works. I got a job in De­ At the door he put down the bags and troit." faced her. She sat down on the edge of the bed. She "Well," he said. "Well, take cai-e of your­ had drunk much the night before, and the self. You'll be all right, will you?" four Scotches she had had with Mrs. Martin "Oh, sure," she said. had only increased her fogginess. He opened the door, then came back to "Good job?" she said. her, holding out his hand. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Looks all right." " 'Bye,' Haze," he said. "Good luck to He closed a suitcase with difficulty, swear­ you." ing at it in whispers. She took his hand and shook it. "There's some dough in the bank," he "Pardon my wet glove," she said. said. "The bank book's in your top drawer. When the door had closed behind him, she . You can have the furniture and stuff." went back to the pantry. He looked at her, and his forehead She. was flushed and lively when she went twitched. in to Mrs. Martin's that evening. The Boys "God^ damn it, I'm through, I'm telling were there," Ed among them. He was glad you," he cried. "I'm through." to be in town, frisky and loud and full of "All right, all right," she said.' "I heard jokes. But she spoke quietly to him for a you, didn't I?" minute. ! She saw him as if he were at one end of "Herbie blew today," she said. "Going a caiion and she at the other. Her head was to live out west." beginning to ache bumpingly, and her voice "That so?" he said. He looked at her had a dreary, tiresome tone. She could not and played with the fountain pen clipped have raised it. to his waistcoat pocket. "Like a drink before you go ?" she asked. "Think he's gone for good, do you ?" he Again he looked at her, and a corner of asked. his mouth jerked up. • • "Yeah," she said. "I know he is. I know. "Cockeyed again for a change, aren't Yeah." you?" he said. "That's nice. Sure, get a "You going to live on across the hall just couple of shots, will you?" the same?" he said. "Know what you're She went to the pantry, mixed him a stiff going to do?" )

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"Gee, I don't know," she said. "I don't lessness and felt doubly a man of the world give much of a damn." in abetting it. "Oh, come on, that's no way to talk," he The coffee was all she had until she went told her. "What you need—you need a little out to dinner, but alcohol kept her fat. Pro­ snifter. How about it?" ' hibition she regarded only as a basis for "Yeah," she said. "Just straight." jokes. You could always get all you wanted. She won forty-three dollars at poker. She was never noticeably drunk and seldom When the game broke up, Ed took her back nearly sober. It" required a larger daily al­ to her apartment. lowance to keep her misty-minded. Too lit­ "Got a little kiss for me?" he asked. tle, and she was achingly melancholy. He wrapped her in his big arms and kissed Ed brought her to Jimmy's. He was her violently. She was entirely passive. He proud, with the pride of the transient who held her away and looked at her, would be mistaken for a native, in his knowl­ "Little tight, honey?" he asked, anxiously. edge of small, recent restaurants occupying "Not going to be sick, are you?" \ the lower floors of shabby brownstone "Me?" she said. "I'm swell." houses; places where, upon mentioning the name of an habitue friend, might be obtained strange whiskey and fresh gin in many of II their ramifications. Jimmy's place was the When Ed left in the morning, he took her favorite of his acquaintances. photograph with him. He said he wanted There, through Ed, Mrs. Morse met many her picture to look at, up in Utica. "You men and women, formed quick friendships. can have that one on the bureau," she said. The men often took her out when Ed was She put Herbie's picture in a drawer, out in Utica. He was proud of her popularity. of her sight. When she could look at it, she She fell into the habit of going to Jimmy's meant to tear it up. She was fairly success­ alone when she had no engagement. She ful in keeping her mind from racing around was certain to meet some people she knew, him. Whiskey slowed it for her. She was and join them. It was a club for her friends, almost peaceful, in her mist. • both men and women. She accepted her relationship with Ed The women at Jimmy's looked remarkably without question or enthusiasm. When he alike, and this was curious, for, through was away, she seldom thought definitely of feuds, removals and opportunities of more him. He was good to her; he gave her fre­ profitable contacts, the personnel of the quent presents and a regular allowance. She group changed constantly. Yet always the was even able to save. She did not plan newcomers resembled those whom they re­ ahead of any day, but her wants were few, placed. They were all big women and stout, and you might as well put money in the broad of shoulder and abundantly breasted, bank as have it lying around. with faces thickly clothed in soft, high- When the lease of her apartment neared colored flesh. They laughed loud and often, its end, it was Ed who suggested moving. showing opaque and lustreless teeth like His friendship with Mrs. Martin "and Joe squares of crockery. There was about them had become strained over a dispute at poker; the health of the big, yet a slight, unwhole­ a feud was impending. some suggestion of stubborn preservation. "Let's get the hell out of here," Ed said. They might have been thirty-six or forty- "What I want you to have is a place near five or anywhere between. the Grand Central. Make it easier for me." They composed their titles of their own So she took a little flat in the forties. A first names with their husbands' surnames^ colored maid came in every day to clean Mrs. Florence Miller, Mrs. Vera Riley, Mrs. and to make coffee for her—she was "through Lilian Block. This gave at the same time with that housekeeping stuff", she said, and the solidity of marriage and the glamour of Ed, twenty years married to a passionately freedom. Yet only one or two were actually domestic woman, admired this romantic use- divorced. Most of them never referred to

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their dimmed spouses; some, a shorter time Even her slightest acquaintances seemed separate, described them in terms of great irritated if she were not conspicuously light- biological interest. Several were mothers, hearted. each of an only child—a boy at school some­ "What's the matter with you, anyway?" where, or a girl being cared for by a grand­ they would say. "Be your age, why don't mother. Often, well on towards morning, you ? Have a little drink and snap out of it." there would be displays of kodak portraits When her relationship with Ed had con­ and of tears. tinued nearly three years, he moved to They were comfortable women, cordial Florida to live. He hated leaving her; he and friendly and irrepressibly matronly. gave her a large cheque and some shares of Theirs was the quality of ease. Become a sound stock, and his pale eyes were wet fatalistic, especially about money matters, when he said good-bye. She did not miss they were unworried. Whenever their funds him. He came to New York infrequently, dropped alarmingly, a new donor appeared; perhaps two or three times a year, and hur­ this had always happened. The aim of each ried directly from the train to see her. She was to have one man, permanently, to pay was always pleased to have him come and all her bills, in return for which she would never sorry to see him go. have immediately given up other admirers Charley, an acquaintance of Ed's that she and probably would have become exceedingly had met at Jimmy's, had long admired her. fond of him; for the affections of all of them He had always made opportunities of touch­ were, by now, unexacting, tranquil and easily ing her and leaning close to talk to her. He arranged. This end, however, grew increas­ asked repeatedly of all their friends if they ingly difficult yearly. Mrs. Morse was re­ had ever heard such a fine laugh as she had. garded as fortunate. After Ed left, Charley became the main fig­ Ed had a good year, increased her allow­ ure in her life. She classified him and spoke ance and gave her a sealskin coat. But she of him as "not so bad". There was nearly had to be careful of her moods with him. He a year of Charley; then she divided her time insisted upon gaiety. He would not listen between him and Sydney, another frequenter to admissions of aches or weariness. of Jimmy's; then Charley slipped away al­ "Hey, listen," he would say, "I got wor­ together. ries of my own, and plenty. Nobody wants Sydney was a little, brightly dressed, to hear other people's troubles, sweetie. What clever Jew. She was perhaps nearest con­ you got to do, you got to be a sport and for­ tentment with him. He amused her always; get it. See? Well, slip us a little smile, her laughter was not forced. then. That's my girl." He admired her completely. Her softness She never had enough interest to quarrel and size delighted him. And he thought she with him as she had with Herbie, but she was great, he often told her, because she kept wanted the privilege of occasional admitted gay and lively when she was drunk. sadness. It was strange. The other women "Once I had a gal," he said, "used to try she saw did not have to fight their moods. and throw herself out of the window every There was Mrs. Florence Miller who got time she got a can on. Jee-suss," he added, regular crying jags, and the men sought only feelingly. to cheer and comfort her. The others spent Then Sydney married a rich and watch­ whole evenings in grieved recitals of worries ful bride, and then there was Billy. No— and ills; their escorts paid them deep sym­ after Sydney came Ferd, then Billy. In pathy. But she was instantly undesirable her haze, she never recalled how men entered when she was low in spirits. Once, at her life and left it. There were no surprises. Jimmy's, when she could not make herself She had no thrill at their advent, nor woe lively, Ed had walked out and left her. at their departure. She seemed to be always "Why the hell don't you stay home and able to attract men. There was never an­ not go spoiling everybody's evening?" he had other as rich as Ed, but they were all gen­ roared. erous to her, in their means.

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Once she had news of Herbie. She met her for most of the time, but there were sud­ Mrs. Martin dining at Jimmy's, and the old den, inexplicable moments when the cloud friendship was vigorously renewed. The fell treacherously away from her, and she still admiring Joe, while on a business trip, was sawn by the sorrow and bewilderment had seen Herbie. He had settled in Chicago, and nuisance of all living. She played vo- he looked fine, he was living with some liiptuously with the thought of cool, sleepy woman—seemed to be crazy about her. Mrs. retreat. She had never been troubled by re­ Morse had been drinking vastly that day. ligious belief and no vision of an after-life She took the news with mild interest, as one intimidated her. She dreamed by day of hearing of the sex peccadilloes of somebody never ag'ain putting on tight shoes, of never whose name is, after a moment's groping, having to laugh and listen and admire, of familiar, s never more being a good sport. Never. "Must be damn near seven years since I But how would you do it? vlt made her saw him," she commented. "Gee. Seven sick to think of jumping from heights. . She years." could not stand a gun. At the theatre, if More and more, her days lost their in­ one of the actors drew a revolver, she dividuality. She never knew dates, nor was crammed her fingers into her ears and could sure of the day of the week. not even look at the stage until after the "My God, was that a year ago!" she would shot had been fired. There was no gas in exclaim, when an event was recalled in con­ her flat. She looked long at-the bright blue versation. veins in her slim wrists—a cut with a razor She was tired so much of the time. Tired blade, and there you'd be. But it would and blue. Almost everything could give her hurt, hurt like hell, and there would be the blues. Those old horses she saw on blood to see. Poison—something tasteless Sixth Avenue—struggling and slipping along and. quick and painless—was the thing. But the car-tracks, or standing at the curb, their they wouldn't sell it to you - in drug-stores, heads dropped level with their worn knees. because of the law. The tightly stored tears would squeeze from She had few other thoughts. her eyes as she teetered past on her aching There was a new man now—-Art. He was feet in the stubby, champagne-colored slip­ short and fat and exacting and hard on her pers. patience when he was drunk. But there The thought of death came and stayed had been only occasionals for some time be­ with her and lent her a sort of drowsy cheer. fore him, and she was glad of a little stabil­ It would be nice, nice and restful, to be dead. ity. Too, Art must be away for weeks at a There was no settled, shocked moment stretch, selling silks, and that was restful. when she first thought of killing herself; it She was convincingly gay with him, though seemed to her as if the idea had always been the effort shook her viciously. with her. She pounced upon all the accounts "The best sport in the world," he would of suicides in the newspapers. There was murmur, deepen her neck. "The best sport an epidemic of self-killings—or maybe it was in the world." just that she searched for the stories of them One night, when he had taken her to Jim­ so eagerly that she found many. To read of my's, she went into the dressing-room with them roused reassurance in her; she felt a Mrs. Florence Miller. There, while design­ cozy solidarity with the big company of the ing curly mouths on their faces with lip- voluntary dead. rouge, they compared experiences of in­ She slept, aided by whiskey, till deep into somnia. the afternoons, then lay abed, a bottle and "Honestly," Mrs. Morse said, "I wouldn't glass at her hand, until it was time to dress close an eye if I didn't go to bed full of to go out for dinner. She was beginning to Scotch. I lie, there and toss and turn and feel towards alcohol a little puzzled distrust, toss and turn. Blue! Does a person' get as toward an old friend who has refused a blue lying' awake that way!" simple favor. Whiskey could still soothe •"Say, listen. Hazel," Mrs. Miller said, im-

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pressively, "I'm telling you I'd be awake said, and she kissed her finger-tip and touched for a year if I didn't take veronal. That each bottle. stuff makes you sleep like a fool." The colored maid was busy in the living "Isn't it poison, or something?" Mrs. room. Morse asked. "Hey, Nettie," Mrs. Morse called. "Be "Oh, • you take too much and you're out an angel, will you? Run around to Jimmy's for the count," said Mrs. Miller. "I just and get me a quart of Scotch." take five grains^they come in tablets. I'd She hummed while she awaited the girl's be scared to fool around with it. But five return. grains, and you cork off pretty." During the next few days, whiskey min­ "Can you get it anywhere?" Mrs. Morse istered to her as tenderly as it had done felt superbly Machiavellian. when she first turned to its aid. Alone, she "Get all you want in Jersey," said Mrs. was soothed and vague, at Jimmy's she was Miller. "They won't give it to you here the gayest of the groups. Art was delighted without you have a doctor's prescription. with her. Finished ? We'd better go back and see what Then, one night, she had an appointment the boys are doing." to meet Art at Jimmy's for an early dinner. That night. Art left Mrs. Morse at the He was to leave afterward on a business ex­ door of her apartment; his mother was in cursion, to be away for a week. Mrs. Morse town. Mrs. Morse was still sober, and it had been drinking all the afternoon; while happened that there was no whiskey left in she dressed to go out, she felt herself rising her cupboard. She lay in bed, looking up pleasurably from drowsiness to high spirits. at the black ceiling. But as she came out into the street the effects She rose early, for her, and went to New of the whiskey deserted her completely, and Jersey. She had never taken the tube, and she was filled with a slow, grinding wretched­ did not understand it. So she went to the ness so horrible that she stood swaying on the Pennsylvania Station and bought a railroad pavement, unable for a moment to move for­ ticket to Newark. She thought of nothing ward. It was a gray night with spurts of in particular on the trip out. She looked at mean, thin snow, and the streets shone with the uninspired hats of the women about her dark . ice. As she slowly crossed Sixth and gazed through the smeared window at Avenue, consciously dragging one foot past the flat, gritty scene. the other, a big, scarred horse pulling a In Newark, in the first drug-store she rickety express-wagon crashed to his knees came to, she asked for a tin of talcum pow­ before her. The driver swore and screamed der, a naU-brush and a box of veronal tab­ and lashed the beast insanely, bringing the lets. The powder and the brush were to whip back over his shoulder for every blow, make the hypnotic seem also a casual need. while the horse struggled to get a footing on The clerk was entirely unconcerned. "We the slippery asphalt. A group gathered and only keep them in bottles," he said and watched with interest. wrapped up for her a little glass vial con­ Art was waiting, when Mrs. Morse reached taining ten white tablets, stacked one on an­ Jimmy's. other. "What's the matter with you, for God's She went to another drug-store and bought sake?" was his greeting to her. a face-cloth, an orange-wood stick and a "I saw a horse," she said. "Gee, I—a bottle of veronal tablets. The clerk was also person feels sorry for horses. I—it isn't uninterested. just horses. Everything's kind of terrible, "Well, I guess I got enough to kill an ox," isn't it ? I can't help getting sunk." she thought, and went back to the station. "Ah, sunk, me eye," he said. "What's the At home, she put the little vials in the idea of all the bellyaching? What have you drawer of her dressing-table and stood look­ got to be sunk about?" ing at them with a dreamy tenderness. "I can't help it," she said. "There they are, God bless them," she "Ah, help it, me eye," he said. "Pull

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yourself together, will you? Come on and interest, if death would strike her down then sit down, and take that face off you." and there. She felt in no way strange, save She drank industriously and she tried for a slight stirring of sickness from the hard, but she could not overcome her mel­ effort of swallowing the tablets, nor did her ancholy. Others joined them and^ com­ reflected face look at all different. It would mented on her gloom, and she could do no not be immediate, then; it might even take more for them than smile weakly. She made an hour or so. little dabs at her eyes with' her handkerchief, She stretched her arms high and gave a trying to time her movements so they would vast yawn. be unnoticed, but several times Art caught "Guess I'll go to bed," she said. "Gee, her and scowled and shifted impatiently in I'm nearly dead." his chair. , That struck her as comic, and she turned When it was time for him to go to his out the bathroom light and went in and laid train, she said she would leave, too, and go herself down in her bed, chuckling softly home. all the time. "And not a bad idea, either," he said. "Gee, I'm nearly dead," she quoted. "See if you can't sleep yourself out of it. "That's a hot one!" I'll see you Thursday. For God's sake, try and cheer up by then, will you?" Ill "Yeah," she said. "I will." In her bedroom, she undressed with a Nettie, the colored maid, came in late the tense speed wholly unlike her usual slow un­ next afternoon to clean the apartment, and certainty. She put on her nightgown, took found Mrs. Morse in her bed. But then, off her hair-net and passed the comb quickly that was not unusual. Usually, though, the through her dry, vari-colored hair. Then sounds of cleaning waked her, and she did she took the two little vials from the drawer not like to wake up. Nettie, an agreeable and carried them into the bathroom. The girl, had learned to move softly about her splintering misery had gone from' her, and work. ' ' ' she felt the quick excitement ^of one who is But when she had done the living room about to receive an anticipated gift. and stolen in to tidy the little square bed­ She uncorked the vials, filled a glass with room, she could not avoid a tiny clatter as water and stood before the mirror, a tablet she arranged the objects on the dressing between her fingers. Suddenly she bowed table. Instinctively, she glanced over her graciously to her reflection, and raised the shoulder at the sleeper, and without warn­ glass to it. ing a sickly uneasiness crept over her. She "Well, here's mud in your eye," she said. came to the bed and stared down at the The tablets were unpleasant to take, dry woman lying there. and powdery and sticking obstinately half­ Mrs. Morse lay on her back, one flabby, way down her throat. It took her a long white arm flung up, the wrist against her time to swallow all twenty of them. She forehead. Her stiff hair hung untenderly stood watching her reflection with deep, im­ along her face. The bed covers were pushed personal interest, studying the movements of down, exposing a deep square of soft neck the gulping throat. Once more,she spoke and a pink nightgown, its fabric worn un­ aloud to it. even by many launderings; her great breasts, "For God's sake, try and cheer up by freed from their tight confiner, sagged be­ Thursday, will you?" she said. "Well, you neath her arm-pits. Now and then she know what he can do. He and the -whole lot made knotted, snoring sounds, and from the of them." corner of her opened mouth to the blurred She had no idea how quickly to expect turn of her jaw ran a lane of crusted spittle. effect from the veronal. When she had "Mis' Morse," Nettie called. "Oh, Mis' taken the last tablet, she stood uncertainly, Morse! It's terrible late." wondering, still with a courteous, vicarious Mrs. Morse made no move.

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"Mis' Morse/' said Nettie. "Look, Mis' "Snap it up there, big boy," the girl called Morse. How'm I goin' get this bed made?" after him. "Don't be all night." Panic sprang upon the girl. She shook The doctor strode loudly into Mrs. Morse's the woman's hot shoulder. flat and on to the bedroom, Nettie and the "Ah, wake up, will yuh?" she whined. boy right behind him. Mrs. Morse had not "Ah, please wake up." moved; her sleep was as deep, but sound­ Suddenly the girl turned and ran out less, now. The doctor looked sharply at her, in the hall to the elevator door, keeping her then plunged his thumbs into the lidded pits thumb firm on the black, shiny button until above her eyeballs and threw his weight upon the elderly car and its Negro attendant stood them. A high, sickened cry broke from before her. She poured a jumble of words Nettie. over the boy, and led him back to the apart­ "Look like he try in' to push her right on ment. He tiptoed creakingly in to the bed­ th'ough the bed," said the boy. He chuckled. side; first gingerly, then so lustily that he Mrs. Morse gave no sign under the pres­ left marks in the soft flesh, he prodded the sure. Abruptly the doctor abandoned it, unconscious woman. and with one quick movement swept the "Hey, there!" he cried, and listened in­ covers down to the foot of the bed. With tently, as for an echo. another he flung her nightgown back and "Jeez. Out like a light," he commented. lifted the thick, white legs, cross-hatched At his interest in the spectacle, Nettie's with blocks of tiny, • iris-colored veins. He panic left her. Importance was big in both pinched them repeatedly, with long, cruel of them^. They talked in quick, unfinished nips, back of the knees. She did not whispers, and it was the boy's suggestion awaken. that he fetch the young doctor who lived on "What's she been drinking?" he asked the ground floor. Nettie hurried along with Nettie, over his shoulder. him. They looked forward to the limelit With the certain celerity of one who knows moment of breaking their news of something just where to lay hands on a thing, Nettie untoward, something pleasurably unpleas­ went into the bathroom, bound for the cup­ ant. Mrs. Morse had become the medium of board where Mrs. Morse kept her whiskey. drama. With no ill wish to her, they hoped But she stopped at the sight of the two that her state was serious, that she would vials, with their red and white labels, lying not let them down by being awake and nor­ , before the mirror. She brought them to the mal on their return. A little fear of this doctor. determined them to make the most, to the "Oh, for the Lord Almighty's sweet sake!" doctor, of her present condition. "Matter of he said. He dropped Mrs. Morse's limp legs, life and death" returned to Nettie from her and pushed them impatiently across the thin store of reading. She considered start­ bed. "What did she want to go taking that ling the doctor with the phrase. tripe for? Eotten yellow trick, that's what The doctor was in and none too pleased at a thing like that is. Now we'll have to pump interruption. He wore a yellow and blue her out, and all that stuff. Nuisance, a thing striped dressing-gown, and he was lying on like that is; that's what it amounts to. Here, his sofa, laughing, with a dark girl, her face George, take me down in the elevator. You scaly with inexpensive powder, who perched wait here, maid. She won't do anything." on the arm. Half-emptied highball glasses "She won' die on me, will she?" cried stood beside them, and her coat and hat were Nettie. neatly hung up with the comfortable implica­ "No," said the doctor. "God, no. You tion of a long stay. couldn't kill her with an axe." Always something, the doctor grumbled. Couldn't let anybody alone after a hard day. IV But he put some bottles and instruments into a case, changed his dressing-gown for After two days, Mrs. Morse came back to his coat and started out with the Negroes. consciousness, dazed at first, then with a

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 650 THE BOOKMAN comprehension that brought with it the slow, , She handed Mrs. Morse a post card. saturating wretchedness. Mrs. Morse had to cover one eye with her "Oh, Lord, oh. Lord," she .moaned, and hand, in order to read the message; her eyes tears for herself and for life striped her were not yet focussing correctly. cheeks. , It was from Art. On the back of a view Nettie came in at the sound. For two of the Detroit Athletic Club he had written: days she had done the ugly, incessant tasks "Greeting and salutations. Hope you have in the nursing of the unconscious, for two lost that gloom. Cheer up and don't take nights she had caught broken bits of sleep any rubber nickles. See you on Thursday". on the living room couch. She looked coldly She dropped the card to the floor. Misery at the big, blown woman in the bed. crushed her as if she were between great "What you been tryin' to do, Mis' Morse ?" smooth stones. There passed before her a she said. "What kine o' work is that, takin' slow, slow pageant of days spent lying in her all that stuff.?" flat, of evenings at Jimmy's being a good "Oh, Lord," moaned Mrs. Morse, again, sport, making herself laugh and coo at Art and she tried to cover her eyes with her and other Arts; she saw a long parade of arms. But the joints felt stiff and brittle, weary horses and shivering beggars and all and she cried out at their ache. beaten, driven, stumbling things. Her feet "Tha's no way to ack, takin' them pills," throbbed as if she had crammed them into, said Nettie. "You can thank you' stars you the stubby champagne-colored slippers. Her heah at all. How you feel now.''" heart seemed to swell and fester. "Oh, I feel great," said Mrs. Morse. "Nettie," she cried, "for heaven's sake "Swell, I feel." pour me a drink, will you?" Her hot, painful tears fell as if they would The maid looked doubtful. never stop. "Now you know. Mis' Morse," she said, "Tha's no way to take on, cryin' like that," "you been near daid. I don' know if the Nettie said. "After what you done. "The doctor he let you drink nothin' yet." doctor, he says he could have you arrested, "Oh, never mind him," she said. "You. doin' a thing like that. He was fit to be get me one, and bring in, the bottle. Take tied, here." one yourself." "Why couldn't he let me alone?" wailed "Well," said Nettie. Mrs. Morse. "Why the hell couldn't he She poured them each a drink, defer­ have?" I i entially leaving hers in the bathroom to be "Tha's terr'ble, Mis' Morse, swearin' an'~ taken in solitude, and brought Mrs; Morse's talkin' like that," said Nettie, "after what glass in to her. people done for. you. Here I ain' had no Mrs. Morse looked into the liquor and sleep at all, an' I had to give up goin' out shuddered back from its odor. Maybe it to my other ladies!" would help. Maybe, when- you had been "Oh, I'm sorry, Nettie," she said. "You're knocked cold for a few days, your very first a peach. I'm sorry I've given you so much drink would give you a lift. Maybe whiskey trouble. I couldn't help it. 1 just got sunk. would be her friend again. She prayed with­ Didn't you ever feel like doing it? When out addressing a God, without knowing a God. everything looks just lousy to you?" Oh, please," please, let her be able to get "I wouldn' think o' no such thing," de­ drunk, please keep her always drunk. clared Nettie. "You got to cheer up. Tha's She lifted the glass. what you got to do. Everybody's got their "Thanks, Nettie," she said. "Here's mud troubles." in your eye." "Yeah," said Mrs. Morse. "I know." The maid giggled. "Tha's the way. Mis' "Come a pretty picture card for you," Morse," she said. "You cheer up, now." Nettie said. "Maybe that will cheer you up." "Yeah,", said Mrs. Morse. "Sure."

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Katherine Anne Porter

Theft

FROM The Gyroscope

SHE HAD the purse in her hand when she came in. Standing in the middle of the floor, holding her bathrobe around her and trailing a damp towel in one hand, she surveyed the immediate past and remem- bered everything clearly. Yes, she had opened the flap and spread it out on the bench after she had dried the purse with her handkerchief. She had intended to take the Elevated, and naturally she looked in her purse to make certain she had the fare, and was pleased to find forty cents in the coin envelope. She was going to pay her own fare, too, even if Camilo did have the habit of seeing her up the steps and dropping a nickel in the machine before he gave the turnstile a little push and sent her through it with a bow. Camilo by a series of compromises had man- aged to make effective a fairly complete set of the smaller courtesies, ignoring the larger and more troublesome ones. She had walked with him to the station in a pouring rain, because she knew he was almost as poor as she was, and when he insisted on a taxi, she was firm and said, "You know it simply will not do." He was wearing a new hat of a pretty biscuit shade, for it never occurred to him to buy anything of a practical colour; he had put it on for the first time and the rain was spoiling it. She kept thinking, "But this is dreadful, where will he get another?" and compared it with Eddie's hats that always seemed to be precisely seven years old and as if they had been quite purposely left out in the rain, and they sat with a careless and incidental rightness on Eddie. But Camilo was far different, if he wore a shabby hat it would be merely shabby on him, and he would lose his spirits over it. If she had not feared Camilo would take it badly, for he insisted on the practise of his little ceremonies up to the point he had fixed for them, she would io6 KATHERINE ANNE PORTER have said to him as they left Thora's house, "Do go home. I can surely reach the station by myself." "It is written that we must be rained upon to-night," said Camilo, "so let it be together." At the foot of the platform stairway she staggered slightly — they were both nicely set up on Thora's cocktails — and said: "At least, Camilo, do me the favor not to climb these stairs in your present state, since for you it is only a matter of coming down again at once, and you'll certainly break your neck." He made three quick bows, he was Spanish, and leaped off through the rainy darkness. She stood watching him, for he was a very graceful young man, thinking that to-morrow morning he would gaze soberly at his spoiled hat and soggy shoes and possibly associate her with his misery. And as she watched, he stopped at the far corner and took off his hat and hid it under his overcoat. She felt she had betrayed him by seeing, because he would have been humiliated if he thought she even suspected him of trying to save his hat. Roger's voice sounded over her shoulder above the clang of the rain falling on the stairway shed, wanting to know what she was doing out in the rain at this time of night, and did she take herself for a duck? His long, imperturbable face was streaming with water, and he tapped a bulging spot on the breast of his buttoned-up overcoat: "Hat," he said. "Come on, let's take a taxi." She settled back against Roger's arm which he laid around her shoul- ders, and with the gesture they exchanged a glance full of long amiable associations, then she looked through the window at the rain changing the shapes of everything, and the colours. The taxi dodged in and out between the pillars of the Elevated, skidding slightly on every curve, and she said: "The more it skids the calmer I feel, so I really must be drunk." "You must be," said Roger. "This bird is a homicidal maniac, and I could do with a cocktail myself this minute." They waited on the traffic at Fortieth Street and Sixth Avenue, and three boys walked before the nose of the taxi. Under the globes of light they were cheerful scarecrows, all very thin and wearing very seedy snappy-cut suits and gay neckties. They were not very sober either, and they stood for a moment wobbling in front of the car, and there was an argument going on among them. They leaned toward each other as if they were getting ready to sing, and the first one said: "When I get married it won't be jus' for getting married, I'm gonna marry for love, see?" and the second one said, "Aw, gwan and tell that stuff to her, 107 why'nt yuh?" and the third one gave a kind of hoot, and said, "Hell, dis guy? Wot the hell's he got?" and the first one said: "Aaah, shurrup yuh mush, I got plenty." Then they all squealed and scrambled across the street beating the third one on the back and pushing him around. "Nuts," commented Roger, "pure nuts." Two girls went skittering by in short transparent raincoats, one green, one red, their heads tucked against the drive of the rain. One of them was saying to the other, "Yes, I know all about that. But what about me? You're always so sorry for him . . ." and they ran on with their little pelican legs flashing back and forth. The taxi backed up suddenly and leaped forward again, and after a while Roger said: "I had a letter from Stella to-day, and she'll be home on the 26th, so I suppose she's made up her mind and it's all settled." "I had a sort of letter to-day too," she said. "I think it is time for you and Stella to do something definite." When the taxi stopped on the corner of West Fifty-third Street, Roger said, "I've just enough if you'll add ten cents," so she opened her purse and gave him a dime, and he said, "That's beautiful, that purse." "It's a birthday present," she told him, "and I like it. How's your show coming?" "Oh, still hanging on, I guess. I don't go near the place. Nothing sold yet. I mean to keep right on the way I'm going and they can take it or leave it. I'm through with the argument." "It's absolutely a matter of holding out, isn't it?" "Holding out's the tough part." "Good-night, Roger." "Good-night, you should take aspirin and push yourself into a tub of hot water, you look as though you're catching cold." "I wUl." With the purse under her arm she went upstairs, and on the first landing Bill heard her step and poked his head out with his hair tum- bled and his eyes red, and he said: "For Christ's sake come in and have a drink with me. I've had some bad news. "You're perfectly sopping," said Bill. They had two drinks, and Bill told how the director had thrown his play out after the cast had been picked over twice, and had gone through three rehearsals. "I said to him, 'I didn't say it was a masterpiece, I said it was a good show.' And he said, 'It just doesn't play, do you see? It needs a doctor.' So I'm stuck, absolutely stuck," said Bill, on the edge of weeping again. "I've been crying," he told her, "in my cups." And he went on to ask her if she io6 KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

realized that his wife was ruining him with her extravagance. "I send her ten dollars every week of my unhappy life, and I don't really have to. She threatens to jail me if I don't, but she can't do it. God, let her try it after the way she treated me! She's no right to alimony, and she knows it. But I send it because I can't bear to see anybody suffer. And I'm way behind on the piano and the victrola, both — " "Well, this is a pretty rug, anyhow," she said. Bill stared at it and blew his nose. "I got it at Ricci's for ninety-five dollars," he said. "Ricci said it once belonged to Marie Dressier and cost fifteen hundred dollars, but there's a burnt place on it. Can you beat that?" "No," she said. They had another drink and she went to her apartment on the floor above, and there, she now remembered distinctly, she had taken the letter out of the purse before she spread the purse out to dry. She had sat down and read the letter over again: but there were phrases that insisted on being read many times, they had a life of their own separate from the others, and when she tried to read past and around them, they moved with the movement of her eyes, and she could not escape them... "thinking about you more than I mean to ... yes, I even talk about you . . . why were you so anxious to destroy . . . even if I could see you now I would not... not worth all this abomina- ble ... the end ..." Carefully she tore the letter into narrow strips and touched a lighted match to them in the coal grate. Early the next morning she was in the bath tub when the janitress knocked and then came in, calling out that she wished to examine the radiators before she started the furnace going for the winter. After moving about the room for a few minutes, the janitress went out closing the door very sharply. She came out of the bathroom to get a cigarette from the package in the purse. The purse was gone. She dressed and made coffee, and sat by the window while she drank it. Certainly the janitress had taken the purse, and certainly it would be impossible to get it back without a great deal of ridiculous excitement. Then let it go. With this decision of her mind, there rose coincidentally in her blood a deep almost murderous anger. She set the cup carefully in the centre of the table, and walked unsteadily downstairs, three long flights and a short hall and a steep short flight into the basement, where the janitress, her face streaked with coal dust, was shaking up the furnace. "Will you please give me Theft 109 back my purse? There isn't any money in it. It was a present, and I don't want to lose it." The janitress turned without straightening up and peered at her with hot flickering eyes, a red light reflected from the furnace in them. "What do you mean, your purse?" "The gold cloth purse you took from the wooden bench in my room," she said. "I must have it back." "Before God I never laid eyes on your purse, and that's the holy truth," said the janitress. "Oh, well then, keep it," she said, but in a very bitter voice, "keep it if you want it so much." And she walked away. She remembered how she had never locked a door in her life, on some principle of rejection in her that made her uncomfortable in the ownership of things, and her paradoxical boast before the warnings of her friends, that she had never lost a penny by theft; and she had been pleased with the bleak humility of this concrete example designed to illustrate and justify a certain fixed, otherwise baseless and general faith which ordered the movements of her life without regard to her will in the matter. In this moment she felt that she had been robbed of an enormous number of valuable things, whether material or intangible: things lost or broken by her own fault, things she had forgotten and left in houses when she moved: books borrowed and not returned, journeys she had planned and had not made, words she had waited to hear spoken to her and had not heard, and the words she had meant to answer with bitter alternatives and intolerable substitutes worse than nothing, and yet inescapable: the long patient suffering of dying friendships and the dark inexplicable death of love — all that she had had, and all that she had missed, were lost together, and were twice lost in this landslide of re- membered losses. The janitress was following her upstairs with her purse in her hand and the same deep red fire flickering in her eyes. The janitress thrust the purse towards her while they were still a half dozen steps apart, and said: "Don't never tell on me. I musta been crazy. I get crazy in the head sometimes, I swear I do. My son can tell you." She took the purse after a moment, and the janitress went on: "I got a niece who is going on seventeen, and she's a nice girl and I thought I'd give it to her. She needs a pretty purse. I musta been crazy, I thought maybe you wouldn't mind, you leave things around and don't seem to notice much." io6 KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

She said: "I missed this because it was a present to me from some one .. ." The janitress said: "He'd get you another if you lost this one. My niece is young and needs pretty things, we oughta give the young ones a chance. She's got young men after her maybe will want to marry her. She oughta have nice things. She needs them bad right now. You're a grown woman, you've had your chance, you ought to know how it is!" She held the purse out to the janitress saying: "You don't know what you're talking about. Here, take it, I've changed my mind. I really don't want it." The janitress looked up at her with hatred and said: "I don't want it either now. My niece is young and pretty, she don't need fixin' up to be pretty, she's young and pretty anyhow! I guess you need it worse than she does!" "It wasn't really yours in the first place," she said, turning away. "You mustn't talk as if I had stolen it from you." "It's not from me, it's from her you're stealing it," said the janitress, and went back downstairs. She laid the purse on the table and sat down with the cup of chilled coffee, and thought. I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing. 1944

Jean Stafford.

The Interior Castle

FROM Partisan Review

PANSY VANNEMAN, injured in an automobile accident, often woke up before dawn when the night noises of the hospital still came, in hushed hurry, through her half-open door. By day, when the nurses talked audibly with the internes, laughed without inhibition, and took no pains to soften their footsteps on the resounding composition floors, the routine of the hospital seemed as bland and commonplace as that of a bank or a factory. But in the dark hours, the whispering and the quickly stilled clatter of glasses and basins, the moans of patients whose morphine was wearing off, the soft squeak of a stretcher as it rolled past in its way from the emergency ward — these suggested agony and death. Thus, on the first morning, Pansy had faltered to consciousness long before daylight and had found herself in a ward from every bed of which, it seemed to her, came the bewildered protest of someone about to die. A caged light burned on the floor beside the bed next to hers. Her neighbor was dying and a priest was administering Extreme Unction. He was stout and elderly and he suffered from asthma so that the struggle of his breathing, so close to her, was the basic pattern and all the other sounds were superimposed upon it. Two middle-aged men in overcoats knelt on the floor beside the high bed. In a foreign tongue, the half-gone woman babbled against the hissing and sighing of the Latin prayers. She played with her rosary as if it were a toy: she tried, and failed, to put it into her mouth. Pansy felt horror, but she felt no pity. An hour or so later, when the white ceiling lights were turned on and everything — faces, counter- panes, and the hands that groped upon them — was transformed into a uniform gray sordor, the woman was wheeled away in her bed to die somewhere else, in privacy. Pansy did not quite take this in, although The Interior Castle 251

she stared for a long time at the new, empty bed that had replaced the other. The next morning, when she again woke up before the light, this time in a private room, she recalled the woman with such sorrow that she might have been a friend. Simultaneously, she mourned the driver of the taxicab in which she had been injured, for he had died at about noon the day before. She had been told this as she lay on a stretcher in the corridor, waiting to be taken to the x-ray room; an interne, passing by, had paused and smiled down at her and had said, "Your cab-driver is dead. You were lucky." Six weeks after the accident, she woke one morning just as daylight was showing on the windows as a murky smear. It was a minute or two before she realized why she was so reluctant to be awake, why her uneasiness amounted almost to alarm. Then she remembered that her nose was to be operated on today. She lay straight and motionless under the seersucker counterpane. Her blood-red eyes in her darned face stared through the window and saw a frozen river and leafless elm trees and a grizzled esplanade where dogs danced on the ends of leashes, their bundled-up owners stumbling after them, half blind with sleepi- ness and cold. Warm as the hospital room was, it did not prevent Pansy from knowing, as keenly as though she were one of the walkers, how very cold it was outside. Each twig of a nearby tree was stark. Cold red brick buildings nudged the low-lying sky which was pale and inert like a punctured sac. In six weeks, the scene had varied little: there was promise in the skies neither of sun nor of snow; no red sunsets marked these days. The trees could neither die nor leaf out again. Pansy could not remember another season in her life so constant, when the very minutes themselves were suffused with the winter pallor as they dropped from the moon-faced clock in the corridor. Likewise, her room accomplished no alterations from day to day. On the glass-topped bureau stood two potted plants telegraphed by faraway well-wishers. They did not fade, and if a leaf turned brown and fell, it soon was replaced; so did the blossoms renew themselves. The roots, like the skies and like the bare trees, seemed zealously determined to maintain a status quo. The bedside table, cov- ered every day with a clean white towel, though the one removed was always immaculate, was furnished sparsely with a water glass, a bent drinking tube, a sweating pitcher, and a stack of paper handkerchiefs. There were a few letters in the drawer, a hairbrush, a pencil, and some postal cards on which, from time to time, she wrote brief messages to 252 JEAN STAFFORD

relatives and friends: "Dr. Nash says that my reflexes are shipshape (sic) and Dr. Rivers says the frontal fracture has all but healed and that the occipital is coming along nicely. Dr. Nicholas, the nose doctor, promises to operate as soon as Dr. Rivers gives him the go-ahead sign (sic)." The bed itself was never rumpled. Once fretful and now convalescent, Miss Vanneman might have been expected to toss or turn the pillows or to unmoor the counterpane; but hour after hour and day after day she lay at full length and would not even suffer the nurses to raise the head-piece of the adjustable bed. So perfect and stubborn was her body's immobility that it was as if the room and the landscape, mor- tified by the ice, were extensions of herself. Her resolute quiescence and her disinclination to talk, the one seeming somehow to proceed from the other, resembled, so the nurses said, a final coma. And they ob- served, in pitying indignation, that she might as well be dead for all the interest she took in life. Amongst themselves they scolded her for what they thought a moral weakness: an automobile accident, no matter how serious, was not reason enough for anyone to give up the will to live or to be happy. She had not — to come down bluntly to the facts — had the decency to be grateful that it was the driver of the cab and not she who had died. (And how dreadfully the man had died!) She was twenty- five years old and she came from a distant city. These were really the only facts known about her. Evidently she had not been here long, for she had no visitors, a lack which was at first sadly moving to the nurses but which became to them a source of unreasonable annoyance: had anyone the right to live so one-dimensionally? It was impossible to laugh at her, for she said nothing absurd; her demands could not be complained of because they did not exist; she could not be hated for a sharp tongue nor for a supercilious one; she could not be admired for bravery or for wit or for interest in her fellow creatures. She was believed to be a frightful snob. Pansy, for her part, took a secret and mischievous pleasure in the bewilderment of her attendants and the more they courted her with offers of magazines, cross-word puzzles, and a radio which she could rent from the hospital, the farther she retired from them into herself and into a world which she had created in her long hours here and which no one could even penetrate nor imagine. Sometimes she did not even answer the nurses' questions; as they rubbed her back with alcohol and steadily discoursed, she was as remote from them as if she were miles away. She did not think that she lived on a higher plane than that of the nurses and the doctors but that she lived on a different one and The Interior Castle 253 that at this particular time — this time of exploration and habituation — she had no extra strength to spend on making herself known to them. All she had been before and all the memories she might have brought out to disturb the monotony of, say, the morning bath, and all that the past meant to the future when she would leave the hospital, were of no present consequence to her. Not even in her thoughts did she employ more than a minimum of memory. And when she did remem- ber, it was in flat pictures, rigorously independent of one another: she saw her thin, poetic mother who grew thinner and more poetic in her canvas deck chair at Saranac reading Lalla Rookh. She saw herself in an inappropriate pink hat drinking iced tea in a garden so oppressive with the smell of phlox that the tea itself tasted of it. She recalled an after- noon in autumn in Vermont when she had heard three dogs' voices in the north woods and she could tell, by the characteristic minor key struck three times at intervals, like bells from several churches, that they had treed something: the eastern sky was pink and the trees on the horizon looked like some eccentric vascular system meticulously drawn on colored paper. What Pansy thought of all the time was her own brain. Not only the brain as the seat of consciousness, but the physical organ itself which she envisaged, romantically, now as a jewel, now as a flower, now as a light in a glass, now as an envelope of rosy vellum containing other envelopes, one within the other, diminishing infinitely. It was always pink and always fragile, always deeply interior and invaluable. She believed that she had reached the innermost chamber of knowledge and that perhaps her knowledge was the same as the saint's achievement of pure love. It was only convention, she thought, that made one say "sacred heart" and not "sacred brain." Often, but never articulately, the color pink troubled her and the picture of herself in the wrong hat hung steadfastly before her mind's eye. None of the other girls had worn hats and since autumn had come early that year, they were dressed in green and rusty brown and dark yellow. Poor Pansy wore a white eyelet frock with a lacing of black ribbon around the square neck. When she came through the arch, overhung with bittersweet, and saw that they had not yet heard her, she almost turned back, but Mr. Oliver was there and she was in love with him. She was in love with him though he was ten years older than she and had never shown any interest in her beyond asking her once, quite fatuously but in an intimate voice, if the yodeling of the little boy who peddled clams did not make her wish to visit Switzerland. Actually, 254 JEAN STAFFORD there was more to this question than met the eye, for some days later Pansy learned that Mr. Oliver, who was immensely rich, kept an apart- ment in Geneva. In the garden that day, he spoke to her only once. He said, "My dear, you look exactly like something out of Katherine Mans- field," and immediately turned and within her hearing asked Beatrice Sherburne to dine with him that night at the Country Club. Afterward, Pansy went down to the sea and threw the beautiful hat onto the full tide and saw it vanish in the wake of a trawler. Thereafter, when she heard the clam boy coming down the road, she locked the door and when the knocking had stopped and her mother called down from her chaise longue, "Who was it, dearie?" she replied, "A salesman." It was only the fact that the hat had been pink that worried her. The rest of the memory was trivial, for she knew that she could never again love anything as ecstatically as she loved the spirit of Pansy Vanneman, enclosed within her head. But her study was not without distraction, and she fought two adver- saries: pain and Dr. Nicholas. Against Dr. Nicholas, she defended herself valorously and in fear; but pain, the pain, that is, that was independent of his instruments, she sometimes forced upon herself adventurously like a child scaring himself in a graveyard. Dr. Nicholas greatly admired her crushed and splintered nose which he daily probed and peered at, exclaiming that he had never seen anything like it. His shapely hands ached for their knives; he was impa- tient with the skull-fracture man's cautious delay. He spoke of "our" nose and said "we" would be a new person when we could breathe again. His own nose, the trademark of his profession, was magnificent. Not even his own brilliant surgery could have improved upon it nor could a first-rate sculptor have duplicated its direct downward line which permitted only the least curvature inward toward the end; nor the delicately rounded lateral declivities; nor the thin-walled, perfectly matched nostrils. Miss Vanneman did not doubt his humaneness nor his talent — he was a celebrated man — but she questioned whether he had imagination. Immediately beyond the prongs of his speculum lay her treasure whose price he, no more than the nurses, could estimate. She believed he could not destroy it, but she feared that he might maim it: might leave a scratch on one of the brilliant facets of the jewel, bruise a petal of the flower, smudge the glass where the light burned, blot the envelopes, and that then she would die or would go mad. While she did not question that in either eventuality her brain would after a time redeem its original impeccability, she did not quite yet wish to enter The Interior Castle 255 upon either kind of eternity, for she was not certain that she could carry with her her knowledge as well as its receptacle. Blunderer that he was, Dr. Nicholas was an honorable enemy, not like the demon, pain, which skulked in a thousand guises within her head, and which often she recklessly willed to attack her and then drove back in terror. After the rout, sweat streamed from her face and soaked the neck of the coarse hospital shirt. To be sure, it came usually of its own accord, running like a wild fire through all the convolutions to fill with flame the small sockets and ravines and then, at last, to withdraw, leaving behind a throbbing and an echo. On these occasions, she was as helpless as a tree in a wind. But at the other times when, by closing her eyes and rolling up the eyeballs in such a way that she fancied she looked directly on the place where her brain was, the pain woke slug- gishly and came toward her at a snail's pace. Then, bit by bit, it gained speed. Sometimes it faltered back, subsided altogether, and then it rushed like a tidal wave driven by a hurricane, lashing and roaring until she lifted her hands from the counterpane, crushed her broken teeth into her swollen lip, stared in panic at the soothing walls with her ruby eyes, stretched out her legs until she felt their bones must snap. Each cove, each narrow inlet, every living bay was flooded and the frail brain, a little hat-shaped boat, was washed from its mooring and set adrift. The skull was as vast as the world and the brain was as small as a seashell. Then came calm weather and the safe journey home. She kept vigil for a while, though, and did not close her eyes, but gazing pacifically at the trees, conceived of the pain as the guardian of her treasure who would not let her see it; that was why she was handled so savagely whenever she turned her eyes inward. Once this watch was interrupted: by chance she looked into the corridor and saw a shaggy mop slink past the door, followed by a senile porter. A pair of ancient eyes, as rheumy as an old dog's, stared uncritically in at her and the toothless mouth formed a brutish word. She was so surprised that she immediately closed her eyes to shut out the shape of the word and the pain dug up the unmapped regions of her head with mattocks, ludicrously huge. It was the familiar pain, but this time, even as she endured it, she observed with detachment that its effect upon her was less than that of its con- tents, the by-products, for example, of temporal confusion and the bi- zarre misapplication of the style of one sensation to another. At the moment, for example, although her brain reiterated to her that it was being assailed, she was stroking her right wrist with her left hand as 256 JEAN STAFFORD

though to assuage the ache, long since dispelled, of the sprain in the joint. Some minutes after she had opened her eyes and left off soothing her wrist, she lay rigid experiencing the sequel to the pain, an ideal terror. For, as before on several occasions, she was overwhelmed with the knowledge that the pain had been consummated in the vessel of her mind and for the moment the vessel was unbeautifiil: she thought, quailing, of those plastic folds as palpable as the fingers of locked hands containing in their very cells, their fissures, their repulsive hemispheres, the mind, the soul, the inscrutable intelligence. The porter, then, like the pink hat and like her mother and the hounds' voices, loitered with her.

Dr. Nicholas came at nine o'clock to prepare her for the operation. With him came an entourage of white-frocked acolytes, and one of them wheeled in a wagon on which lay knives and scissors and pincers, cans of swabs and gauze. In the midst of these was a bowl of liquid whose rich purple color made it seem strange like the brew of an alchemist. "All set?" he asked her, smiling. "A little nervous, what? I don't blame you. I've often said I'd rather lose an arm than have a submucuous resection." Pansy thought for a moment he was going to touch his nose. His approach to her was roundabout. He moved through the yellow light shed by the globe in the ceiling which gave his forehead a liquid gloss; he paused by the bureau and touched a blossom of the cyclamen; he looked out the window and said, to no one and to all, "I couldn't start my car this morning. Came in a cab." Then he came forward. As he came, he removed a speculum from the pocket of his short-sleeved coat and like a cat, inquiring of the nature of a surface with its paws, he put out his hand toward her and drew it back, gently murmuring, "You must not be afraid, my dear. There is no danger, you know. Do you think for a minute I would operate if there were?" Dr. Nicholas, young, brilliant, and handsome, was an aristocrat, a husband, a father, a clubman, a Christian, a kind counselor, and a trustee of his school alumni association. Like many of the medical profession, even those whose speciality was centered on the organ of the basest sense, he interested himself in the psychology of his patients: in several instances, for example, he had found that severe attacks of sinusitis were coincident with emotional crises. Miss Vanneman more than ordinarily captured his fancy since her skull had been fractured and her behavior throughout had been so extraordinary that he felt he The Interior Castle 257 was observing at first hand some of the results of shock, that incom- mensurable element, which frequently were too subtle to see. There was, for example, the matter of her complete passivity during a lumbar puncture, reports of which were written down in her history and were enlarged upon for him by Dr. Rivers' interne who had been in charge. Except for a tremor in her throat and a deepening of pallor, there were no signs at all that she was aware of what was happening to her. She made no sound, did not close her eyes nor clench her fists. She had had several punctures; her only reaction had been to the very first one, the morning after she had been brought in. When the interne explained to her that he was going to drain off cerebrospinal fluid which was press- ing against her brain, she exclaimed, "My God!" but it was not an exclamation of fear. The young man had been unable to name what it was he had heard in her voice; he could only say that it had not been fear as he had observed it in other patients. He wondered about her. There was no way of guessing whether she had always had a nature of so tolerant and undemanding a complexion. It gave him a melancholy pleasure to think that before her accident she had been high-spirited and loquacious; he was moved to think that perhaps she had been a beauty and that when she had first seen her face in the looking glass she had lost all joy in herself. It was very difficult to tell what the face had been, for it was so bruised and swollen, so hacked-up and lopsided. The black stitches and length of the nose, across the saddle, across the cheekbone, showed that there would be unsightly scars. He had ventured once to give her the name of a plastic surgeon but she had only replied with a vague, refusing smile. He had hoisted a manly shoulder and said, "You're the doctor." Much as he pondered, coming to no conclusions, about what went on inside that pitiable skull, he was, of course, far more interested in the nose, deranged so badly that it would require his topmost skill to restore its functions to it. He would be obliged not only to make a submucuous resection, a simple run-of-the-mill operation, but to remove the vomer, always a delicate task but further complicated in this case by the prox- imity of the bone to the frontal fracture line which conceivably was not entirely closed. If it were not and he operated too soon and if a cold germ then found its way into the opening, his patient would be carried off by meningitis in the twinkling of an eye. He wondered if she knew in what potential danger she lay; he desired to assure her that he had brought his craft to its nearest perfection and that she had nothing to 258 JEAN STAFFORD fear of him, but feeling that she was perhaps both ignorant and un- imaginative and that such consolation would create a fear rather than dispel one, he held his tongue and came nearer to the bed. Watching him, Pansy could already feel the prongs of his pliers opening her nostrils for the insertion of his fine probers. The pain he caused her with his instruments was of a different kind from that she felt unaided: it was a naked, clean, and vivid pain which made her faint and ill and made her wish to die. Once she had fainted as he ruthlessly explored and after she was brought around, he continued until he had finished his investigation. The memory of this outrage had afterwards several times made her cry. This morning she looked at him and listened to him with hatred. Fixing her eyes upon the middle of his high, protuberant brow, she imagined the clutter behind it and she despised its obtuse imperfection, the reason's oblique comprehension of itself. In his bland unawareness, this nobody, this nose-bigot, was about to play with fire and she wished him ill. He said, "I can't blame you. No, I expect you're not looking for- ward to our little party. But I expect you'll be glad to be able to breathe again." He stationed his lieutenants. The interne stood opposite him on the left side of the bed. The surgical nurse wheeled the wagon within easy reach of his hands and stood beside it. Another nurse stood at the foot of the bed. A third drew the shades at the windows and attached the blinding light which shone down on the patient hotly, and then she left the room, softly closing the door. Pansy stared at the silver ribbon tied in a great bow round the green crepe paper of one of the flower pots. It made her realize for the first time that one of the days she had lain here had been Christmas, but she had no time to consider this strange and thrilling fact, for Dr. Nicholas was genially explaining his anaesthetic. He would soak packs of gauze in the purple fluid, a cocaine solution, and he would place them then in her nostrils, leaving them there for an hour. He warned her that the packing would be disagreeable (he did not say "painful") but that it would be well worth a few minutes of discom- fort not to be in the least sick after the operation. He asked her if she were ready and when she nodded her head, he adjusted the mirror on his forehead and began. At the first touch of his speculum, Pansy's fingers mechanically bent to the palms of her hands and she stiffened. He said, "A pack, Miss Kennedy," and Pansy closed her eyes. There was a rush of plunging pain The Interior Castle 259 as he drove the sodden gobbet of gauze high up into her nose and something bitter burned in her throat so that she retched. The doctor paused a moment and the surgical nurse wiped her mouth. He returned to her with another pack, pushing it with his bodkin doggedly until it lodged against the first. Stop! Stop! cried all her nerves, wailing along the surface of her skin. The coats that covered them were torn off and they shuddered like naked people screaming, Stop! Stop! But Dr. Nicho- las did not hear. Time and again he came back with a fresh pack and did not pause at all until one nostril was finished. She opened her eyes and saw him wipe the sweat off his forehead and saw the dark interne bending over her, fascinated. Miss Kennedy bathed her temples in ice water and Dr. Nicholas said, "There. It won't be much longer. I'll tell them to send you some coffee, though I'm afraid you won't be able to taste it. Ever drink coffee with chicory in it? I have no use for it." She snatched at his irrelevancy and, though she had never tasted chicory, she said severely, "I love it." Dr. Nicholas chuckled. "De gustibus. Ready? A pack, Miss Kennedy." The second nostril was harder to pack since the other side was now distended and the passage was anyhow much narrower, as narrow, he had once remarked, as that in the nose of an infant. In such pain as passed all language and even the farthest fetched analogies, she turned her eyes inward thinking that under the obscuring cloak of the sur- geon's pain, she could see her brain without the knowledge of its keeper. But Dr. Nicholas and his aides would give her no peace. They sur- rounded her with their murmuring and their foot-shuffling and the rustling of their starched uniforms, and her eyelids continually flew back in embarrassment and mistrust. She was claimed entirely by this present, meaningless pain and suddenly and sharply, she forgot what she had meant to do. She was aware of nothing but her ascent to the summit of something; what it was she did not know, whether it was a tower or a peak or Jacob's ladder. Now she was an abstract word, now she was a theorem of geometry, now she was a kite flying, a top spin- ning, a prism flashing, a kaleidoscope turning. But none of the others in the room could see inside and when the surgeon was finished, the nurse at the foot of the bed said, "Now you must take a look in the mirror. It's simply too comical." And they all laughed intimately like old, fast friends. She smiled politely and looked at her reflection: over the gruesomely fattened snout, her scarlet eyes stared in fixed reproach upon the upturned lips, gray with bruises. But even in its smile of betrayal, the mouth itself was puzzled: it reminded 260 JEAN STAFFORD her that something had been left behind, but she could not recall what it was. She was hollowed out and was as dry as a white bone.

They strapped her ankles to the operating table and put leather nooses round her wrists. Over her head was a mirror with a thousand facets in which she saw a thousand travesties of her face. At her right side was the table, shrouded in white, where lay the glittering blades of the many knives, thrusting out fitful rays of light. All the cloth was frosty; every- thing was white or silver and as cold as snow. Dr. Nicholas, a tall snowman with silver eyes and silver fingernails, came into the room soundlessly for he walked on layers and layers of snow which deadened his footsteps; behind him came the interne, a smaller snowman, less impressively proportioned. At the foot of the table, a snow figure put her frozen hands upon Pansy's helpless feet. The doctor plucked the packs from the cold, numb nose. His laugh was like a cry on a bitter, still night: "I will show you now," he called across the expanse of snow, "that you can feel nothing." The pincers bit at nothing, snapped at the air and cracked a nerveless icicle. Pansy called back and heard her own voice echo: "I feel nothing." Here the walls were gray, not tan. Suddenly the face of the nurse at the foot of the table broke apart and Pansy first thought it was in grief. But it was a smile and she said, "Did you enjoy your coffee?" Down the gray corridors of the maze, the words rippled, ran like mice, birds, bro- ken beads: Did you enjoy your coffee? your coffee? your coffee? Simi- larly once in another room that also had gray walls, the same voice had said, "Shall I give her some whiskey?" She was overcome with grati- tude that this young woman (how pretty she was with her white hair and her white face against her china-blue eyes!) had been with her that first night and was with her now. In the great stillness of the winter, the operation began. The knives carved snow. Pansy was happy. She had been given a hypodermic just before they came to fetch her and she would have gone to sleep had she not enjoyed so much this trickery of Dr. Nicholas' whom now she tenderly loved. There was a clock in the operating room and from time to time she looked at it. An hour passed. The snowman's face was melting; drops of water hung from his fine nose, but his silver eyes were as bright as ever. Her love was returned, she knew: he loved her nose exactly as she loved his knives. She looked at her face in the domed mirror and saw how the blood had streaked her lily-white cheeks and had stained her The Interior Castle 261

shroud. She returned to the private song: Did you enjoy your coffee? your coffee? At the half-hour, a murmur, anguine and slumbrous, came to her and only when she had repeated the words twice did they engrave their meaning upon her. Dr. Nicholas said, "Stand back now, nurse. I'm at this girl's brain and I don't want my elbow jogged." Instantly Pansy was alive. Her strapped ankles arched angrily; her wrists strained against their bracelets. She jerked her head and she felt the pain flare; she had made the knife slip. "Be still!" cried the surgeon. "Be quiet, please!" He had made her remember what it was she had lost when he had rammed his gauze into her nose; she bustled like a housewife to shut the door. She thought, I must hurry before the robbers come. It would be like the time Mother left the cellar door open and the robber came and took, of all things, the terrarium. Dr. Nicholas was whispering to her. He said, in the voice of a lover, "If you can stand it five minutes more, I can perform the second operation now and you won't have to go through this again. What do you say?" She did not reply. It took her several seconds to remember why it was her mother had set such store by the terrarium and then it came to her that the bishop's widow had brought her an herb from Palestine to put in it. The interne said, "You don't want to have your nose packed again, do you?" The surgical nurse said, "She's a good patient, isn't she, sir?" "Never had a better," replied Dr. Nicholas. "But don't call me 'sir.' You must be a Canadian to call me 'sir.'" The nurse at the foot of the bed said, "I'll order some more coffee for you." "How about it, Miss Vanneman?" said the doctor. "Shall I go ahead?" She debated. Once she had finally fled the hospital and fled Dr. Nicholas, nothing could compel her to come back. Still, she knew that the time would come when she could no longer live in seclusion, she must go into the world again and must be equipped to live in it; she banally acknowledged that she must be able to breathe. And finally, though the world to which she would return remained unreal, she gave the surgeon her permission. He had now to penetrate regions that were not anaesthetized and this he told her frankly, but he said that there was no danger at all. He apologized for the slip of the tongue he had made: in point of fact, he 262 JEAN STAFFORD

had not been near her brain, it was only a figure of speech. He began. The knives ground and carved and curried and scoured the wounds they made; the scissors clipped hard gristle and the scalpels chipped off bone. It was as if a tangle of tiny nerves were being cut dexterously, one by one; the pain writhed spirally and came to her who was a pink bird and sat on the top of a cone. The pain was a pyramid made of a dia- mond; it was an intense light; it was the hottest fire, the coldest chill, the highest peak, the fastest force, the furthest reach, the newest time. It possessed nothing of her but its one infinitesimal scene: beyond the screen as thin as gossamer, the brain trembled for its life, hearing the knives hunting like wolves outside, sniffing and snapping. Mercy! Mercy! cried the scalped nerves. At last, miraculously, she turned her eyes inward tranquilly. Dr. Nicholas had said, "The worst is over. I am going to work on the floor of your nose," and at his signal she closed her eyes and this time and this time alone, she saw her brain lying in a shell-pink satin case. It was a pink pearl, no bigger than a needle's eye, but it was so beautiful and so pure that its smallness made no difference. Anyhow, as she watched, it grew. It grew larger and larger until it was an enormous bubble that contained the surgeon and the whole room within its rosy luster. In a long ago summer, she had often been absorbed by the spectacle of flocks of yellow birds that visited a cedar tree and she remembered that everything that summer had been some shade of yellow. One year of childhood, her mother had frequently taken her to have tea with an aged schoolmistress upon whose mantelpiece there was a herd of ivory elephants; that had been the white year. There was a green spring when early in April she had seen a grass snake on a boulder, but the very summer that followed was violet, for vetch took her mother's garden. She saw a swatch of blue tulle lying in a raffia basket on the front porch of Uncle Marion's brown house. Never before had the world been pink, whatever else it had been. Or had it been, one other time? She could not be sure and she did not care. Of one thing she was certain: never had the world enclosed her before and never had the quiet been so smooth. For only a moment the busybodies left her to her ecstasy and then, impatient and gossiping, they forced their way inside, slashed at her resisting trance with questions and congratulations, with statements of fact and jokes. "Later," she said to them dumbly. "Later on, perhaps. I am busy now." But their voices would not go away. They touched her, too, washing her face with cloths so cold they stung, stroking her wrists with firm, antiseptic fingers. The surgeon, squeezing her arm with avun- The Interior Castle 263 cular pride, said, "Good girl," as if she were a bright dog that had re- trieved a bone. Her silent mind abused him: "You are a thief," it said, "you are a heartless vagabond and you should be put to death." But he was leaving, adjusting his coat with an air of vainglory, and the interne, abject with admiration, followed him from the operating room smiling like a silly boy. Shortly after they took her back to her room, the weather changed, not for the better. Momentarily the sun emerged from its concealing murk, but in a few minutes the snow came with a wind that promised a blizzard. There was great pain, but since it could not serve her, she rejected it and she lay as if in a hammock in a pause of bitterness. She closed her eyes, shutting herself up within her treasureless head.

Flannery O’ Connor A Good Man Is Hard To Find (1953) The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children's mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar. "The children have been to Florida before," the old lady said. "You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee." The children's mother didn't seem to hear her but the eight-year-old boy, John Wesley, a stocky child with glasses, said, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" He and the little girl, June Star, were reading the funny papers on the floor. "She wouldn't stay at home to be queen for a day," June Star said without raising her yellow head. "Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?" the grandmother asked. "I'd smack his face," John Wesley said. "She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June Star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go." "All right, Miss," the grandmother said. "Just re- member that the next time you want me to curl your hair." June Star said her hair was naturally curly. The next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go. She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it. She didn't intend for the cat to be left alone in the house for three days because he would miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of her gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself. Her son, Bailey, didn't like to arrive at a motel with a cat. She sat in the middle of the back seat with John Wesley and June Star on either side of her. Bailey and the children's mother and the baby sat in front and they left Atlanta at eight forty-five with the mileage on the car at 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back. It took them twenty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city. The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady. She said she thought it was going to be a good day for driving, neither too hot nor too cold, and she cautioned Bailey that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind billboards and small clumps of trees and sped out after you before you had a chance to slow down. She pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their mother and gone back to sleep. "Let's go through Georgia fast so we won't have to look at it much," John Wesley said. "If I were a little boy," said the grandmother, "I wouldn't talk about my native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills."

1 "Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground," John Wesley said, "and Georgia is a lousy state too." "You said it," June Star said. "In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veined fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved "He didn't have any britches on," June Star said. "He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said. The children exchanged comic books. The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children's mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or fix graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. "Look at the graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation." "Where's the plantation?" John Wesley asked. "Gone With the Wind" said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha." When the children finished all the comic books they had brought, they opened the lunch and ate it. The grandmother ate a peanut butter sandwich and an olive and would not let the children throw the box and the paper napkins out the window. When there was nothing else to do they played a game by choosing a cloud and making the other two guess what shape it suggested. John Wesley took one the shape of a cow and June Star guessed a cow and John Wesley said, no, an automobile, and June Star said he didn't play fair, and they began to slap each other over the grandmother. The grandmother said she would tell them a story if they would keep quiet. When she told a story, she rolled her eyes and waved her head and was very dramatic. She said once when she was a maiden lady she had been courted by a Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden from Jasper, Georgia. She said he was a very good-looking man and a gentleman and that he brought her a watermelon every Saturday afternoon with his initials cut in it, E. A. T. Well, one Saturday, she said, Mr. Teagarden brought the watermelon and there was nobody at home and he left it on the front porch and returned in his buggy to Jasper, but she never got the watermelon, she said, because a nigger boy ate it when he saw the initials, E. A. T. ! This story tickled John Wesley's funny bone and he giggled and giggled but June Star didn't think it was any good. She said she wouldn't marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday. The grandmother said she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentle man and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man. They stopped at The Tower for barbecued sand- wiches. The Tower was a part stucco and part wood filling station and dance hall set in a clearing outside of Timothy. A fat man named Red Sammy Butts ran it and there were signs stuck here and there on the building and for miles up and down the highway saying, TRY RED SAMMY'S FAMOUS BARBECUE. NONE LIKE FAMOUS RED SAMMY'S! RED SAM! THE FAT BOY WITH THE HAPPY LAUGH. A VETERAN! RED SAMMY'S YOUR MAN! Red Sammy was lying on the bare ground outside The Tower with his head under a truck while a gray monkey about a foot high, chained to a small chinaberry tree, chattered nearby. The monkey sprang back into the tree and got on the highest limb as soon as he saw the children jump out of the car and run toward him. Inside, The Tower was a long dark room with a counter at one end and tables at the other and dancing space in the middle. They all sat down at a board table next to the nickelodeon and Red Sam's wife, a tall burnt-brown woman with hair and eyes lighter than her skin, came and took their order. The children's mother put a dime in the machine and played "The Tennessee Waltz," and the grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous. The grandmother's brown eyes were very bright. She swayed her head from side to side and pretended she was dancing in her chair. June Star said play something she could tap to so the children's mother put in another dime and played a fast number and June Star stepped out onto the dance floor and did her tap routine. "Ain't she cute?" Red Sam's wife said, leaning over the counter. "Would you like to come be my little girl?"

2 "No I certainly wouldn't," June Star said. "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!" and she ran back to the table. "Ain't she cute?" the woman repeated, stretching her mouth politely. "Arn't you ashamed?" hissed the grandmother. Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these people's order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?" "People are certainly not nice like they used to be," said the grandmother. "Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?" "Because you're a good man!" the grandmother said at once. "Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer. His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. "It isn't a soul in this green world of God's that you can trust," she said. "And I don't count nobody out of that, not nobody," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy. "Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the grandmother. "I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he didn't attack this place right here," said the woman. "If he hears about it being here, I wouldn't be none surprised to see him. If he hears it's two cent in the cash register, I wouldn't be a tall surprised if he . . ." "That'll do," Red Sam said. "Go bring these people their Co'-Colas," and the woman went off to get the rest of the order. "A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more." He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy. They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret:-panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . ." "Hey!" John Wesley said. "Let's go see it! We'll find it! We'll poke all the woodwork and find it! Who lives there? Where do you turn off at? Hey Pop, can't we turn off there?" "We never have seen a house with a secret panel!" June Star shrieked. "Let's go to the house with the secret panel! Hey Pop, can't we go see the house with the secret panel!" "It's not far from here, I know," the grandmother said. "It wouldn't take over twenty minutes." Bailey was looking straight ahead. His jaw was as rigid as a horseshoe. "No," he said. The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel. John Wesley kicked the back of the front seat and June Star hung over her mother's shoulder and whined desperately into her ear that they never had any fun even on their vacation, that they could never do what THEY wanted to do. The baby began to scream and John Wesley kicked the back of the seat so hard that his father could feel the blows in his kidney.

3 "All right!" he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. "Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don't shut up, we won't go anywhere." "It would be very educational for them," the grandmother murmured. "All right," Bailey said, "but get this: this is the only time we're going to stop for anything like this. This is the one and only time." "The dirt road that you have to turn down is about a mile back," the grandmother directed. "I marked it when we passed." "A dirt road," Bailey groaned. After they had turned around and were headed toward the dirt road, the grandmother recalled other points about the house, the beautiful glass over the front doorway and the candle-lamp in the hall. John Wesley said that the secret panel was probably in the fireplace. "You can't go inside this house," Bailey said. "You don't know who lives there." "While you all talk to the people in front, I'll run around behind and get in a window," John Wesley suggested. "We'll all stay in the car," his mother said. They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them. "This place had better turn up in a minute," Bailey said, "or I'm going to turn around." The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months. "It's not much farther," the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder. The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose clinging to his neck like a caterpillar. As soon as the children saw they could move their arms and legs, they scrambled out of the car, shouting, "We've had an ACCIDENT!" The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee. Bailey removed the cat from his neck with both hands and flung it out the window against the side of a pine tree. Then he got out of the car and started looking for the children's mother. She was sitting against the side of the red gutted ditch, holding the screaming baby, but she only had a cut down her face and a broken shoulder. "We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed in a frenzy of delight. "But nobody's killed," June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car, her hat still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side. They all sat down in the ditch, except the children, to recover from the shock. They were all shaking. "Maybe a car will come along," said the children's mother hoarsely. "I believe I have injured an organ," said the grandmother, pressing her side, but no one answered her. Bailey's teeth were clattering. He had on a yellow sport shirt with bright blue parrots designed in it and his face was as yellow as the shirt. The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee. The road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearselike automobile. There were three men in it.

4 It came to a stop just over them and for some minutes, the driver looked down with a steady expressionless gaze to where they were sitting, and didn't speak. Then he turned his head and muttered something to the other two and they got out. One was a fat boy in black trousers and a red sweat shirt with a silver stallion embossed on the front of it. He moved around on the right side of them and stood staring, his mouth partly open in a kind of loose grin. The other had on khaki pants and a blue striped coat and a gray hat pulled down very low, hiding most of his face. He came around slowly on the left side. Neither spoke. The driver got out of the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at them. He was an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn't have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also had guns. "We've had an ACCIDENT!" the children screamed. The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was. He moved away from the car and began to come down the embankment, placing his feet carefully so that he wouldn't slip. He had on tan and white shoes and no socks, and his ankles were red and thin. "Good afternoon," he said. "I see you all had you a little spill." "We turned over twice!" said the grandmother. "Once", he corrected. "We seen it happen. Try their car and see will it run, Hiram," he said quietly to the boy with the gray hat. "What you got that gun for?" John Wesley asked. "Whatcha gonna do with that gun?" "Lady," the man said to the children's mother, "would you mind calling them children to sit down by you? Children make me nervous. I want all you all to sit down right together there where you're at." "What are you telling US what to do for?" June Star asked. Behind them the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth. "Come here," said their mother. "Look here now," Bailey began suddenly, "we're in a predicament! We're in . . ." The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. "You're The Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once!" "Yes'm," the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, "but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me." Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and The Misfit reddened. "Lady," he said, "don't you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don't mean. I don't reckon he meant to talk to you thataway." "You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" the grandmother said and removed a clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it. The Misfit pointed the toe of his shoe into the ground and made a little hole and then covered it up again. "I would hate to have to," he said. "Listen," the grandmother almost screamed, "I know you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!" "Yes mam," he said, "finest people in the world." When he smiled he showed a row of strong white teeth. "God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy's heart was pure gold," he said. The boy with the red sweat shirt had come around behind them and was standing with his gun at his hip. The Misfit squatted down on the ground. "Watch them children, Bobby Lee," he said. "You know they make me nervous." He looked at the six of them huddled together in front of him and he seemed to be embarrassed as if he couldn't think of anything to say. "Ain't a cloud in the sky," he remarked, looking up at it. "Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither." "Yes, it's a beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen," she said, "you shouldn't call yourself The Misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell." "Hush!" Bailey yelled. "Hush! Everybody shut up and let me handle this!" He was squatting in the position of a runner about to sprint forward but he didn't move. "I pre-chate that, lady," The Misfit said and drew a little circle in the ground with the butt of his gun. 5 "It'll take a half a hour to fix this here car," Hiram called, looking over the raised hood of it. "Well, first you and Bobby Lee get him and that little boy to step over yonder with you," The Misfit said, pointing to Bailey and John Wesley. "The boys want to ast you something," he said to Bailey. "Would you mind stepping back in them woods there with them?" "Listen," Bailey began, "we're in a terrible predicament! Nobody realizes what this is," and his voice cracked. His eyes were as blue and intense as the parrots in his shirt and he remained perfectly still. The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground. Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting an old man. John Wesley caught hold of his father's hand and Bobby I,ee followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached the dark edge, Bailey turned and supporting himself against a gray naked pine trunk, he shouted, "I'll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me!" "Come back this instant!" his mother shrilled but they all disappeared into the woods. "Bailey Boy!" the grandmot

6 292 Tillie Olsm I Stand Here Ironing 293

I Stand Here Ironing 1 was nineteen. It was the pre-relief, pre-WPAl world of the depression. I would start running as soon as 1got off the streetcar, running up the stairs, the Tillie Olsen (/9/3- ) place smelling sour, and awake or asleep to startle awake, when she saw me she would break into a dogged weeping that could not be comforted, a weeping I can hear yet. After a while I found a job hashing at night so I could be with her days, and See page 159 for a biographical note on the author. it was better. But it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her. It took a long time to raise the money for her fare back. Then she got chicken pox and I had to wait longer. When she finally came, 1hardly knew her, walking quick and nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin, and dressed in a shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at the pockmarks. All I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth the baby loveliness gone. with the iron. She was two. Old enough for nursery school they said, and 1did not know "1 wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your then what I know now-the fatigue of the long day, and the lacerations of group daughter. I'm sure you can help me understand her. She's a youngster who needs life in the kinds of nurseries that are only parking places for children. help and whom I'm deeply interested in helping." Except that it would have made no difference if 1had known. It was the only "Who needs help:' ... Even if I came, what good would it do? You think be­ place there was. It was the only way we could be together, the only way 1 could cause 1am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a hold a job. key? She has lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened out­ And even without knowing, 1knew. 1knew the teacher that was evil because side of me, beyond me. all these years it has curdled into my memory, the little boy hunched in the cor­ And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total? I ner, her rasp, "why aren't you outside, because Alvin hits you? that's no reason, will start and there will be an interruption and I will have to gather it all together go out, scaredy." 1 knew Emily hated it even if she did not dutch and implore again. Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should "don't go Mommy" like the other children, mornings. have been and what cannot be helped. She always had a reason why we should stay home. Momma, you look sick. She was a beautiful baby. The first and only one of our five that was beauti­ Momma, I feel sick. Momma, the teachers aren't here today, they're sick. ful at birth. You do not guess how new and uneasy her tenancy in her Momma, we can't go, there was a fire there last night. Momma, it's a holiday to­ now-loveliness. You did not know her all those years she was thought homely, or day, no school, they told me. see her poring over her baby pictures, making me tell her over and over how But never a direct protest, never rebellion. 1 think of our others in their beautiful she had been-and would be, I would tell her-and was now, to the three-, four-year-oldness--the explosions, tempers, the denunciations, the de­ seeing eye. But the seeing eyes were few or nonexistent. Including mine. mands--and I feel suddenly ill. 1put the iron down. What in me demanded that I nursed her. They feel that's important nowadays. I nursed all the children, goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness? but with her, with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, I did like the books The old man living in the back once said in his gentle way: "You should then said. Though her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with smile at Emily more when you look at her." What was in my face when 1looked swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed. at her? I loved her. There were all the acts of love. Why do I put that first? I do not even know if it matters, or if it explains any­ Itwas only with the others I remembered what he said, and it was the face of thing. joy, and not of care or tightness or worry I turned to them-too late for Emily. She was a beautiful baby. She blew shining bubbles of sound. She loved mo­ She does not smile easily, let alone almost always as her brothers and sisters do. tion, loved light, loved color and music and textures. She would lie on the floor Her face is closed and sombre, but when she wants, how fluid. You must have in her blue overalls patting the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur. She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all, for I worked or looked for work and for Emily's father, who "could no longer 'Works Prog~ss Administration. This government program provided work to many unemployed endure" (he wrote in his good-bye note) "sharing want with us." people during the Depression. 294 Tillie Olsen I Stand Here Ironing 295 seen it in her pantomimes. you spoke of her rare gift for comedy on the stage There was a tiny girl who always stood hand in hand with Emily. Her par­ that rouses laughter out of the audience so dear they applaud and applaud and ents never came. One visit she was gone. "They moved her to Rose Cottage" do not want to let her go. Emily shouted in explanation. "They don't like you to love anybody here." Where does it come from, that comedy? There was none of it in her when She wrote once a week, the labored writing of a seven-year-old. "I am fine. she came back to me that second time, after I had to send her away again. She How is the baby. If I write my letter nicely I will have a star. Love." There never had a new daddy now to learn to love, and I think perhaps it was a better time. was a star. We wrote every other day, letters she could never hold or keep but Except when we left her alone nights. telling ourselves she was old enough. only hear read~nce. "We simply do not have room for children to keep any "Can't you go some other time, Mommy. like tomorrow?" she would ask. personal possessions," they patiently explained when we pieced one Sunday's "Will it be just a little while you'll be gone? Do you promise?" shrieking together to plead how much it would mean to Emily, who loved so to The time we came back, the front door open, the clock on the floor in the keep things, to be allowed to keep her letters and cards. hall. She rigid awake. "It wasn't just a little while. I didn't cry. Three times I called Each visit she looked frailer. "She isn't eating;' they told us. you, just three times, and then I ran downstairs to open the door so you could (They had runny eggs for breakfast or mush with lumps, Emily said later, I'd come faster. The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked." hold it in my mouth and not swallow. Nothing ever tasted good, just when they She said the clock talked loud again that night I went to the hospital to have had chicken.) Susan. She was delirious with the fever that comes before red measles, but she It took us eight months to get her released home, and only the fact that she was fully conscious all the week I was gone and the week after we were home gained back so little of her seven lost pounds convinced the social worker. when she could not come near the new baby or me. I used to try to hold and love her after she came back, but her body would She did not get welL She stayed skeleton thin, not wanting to eat, and night stay stiff, and after a while she'd push away. She ate little. Food sickened her, and after night she had nightmares. She would call for me, and I would rouse from I think much of life too. Oh she had physical lightness and brightness, twinkling exhaustion to sleepily call back: "You're all right, darling, go to sleep, it's just a by on skates, bouncing like a ball up and down up and down over the jump rope, dream," and if she still called, in a sterner voice, "now to go sleep, Emily, there's skimming over the hill; but these were momentary. nothing to hurt you." Twice, only twice, when I had to get up for Susan anyhow, She fretted about her appearance, thin and dark and foreign-looking at a I went in to sit with her. time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a Now when it is too late (as if she would let me hold and comfort her like I chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple. The doorbell sometimes rang for her, do the others) I get up and go to her at once at her moan or restless stirring. "Me but no one seemed to come and play in the house or be a best friend. Maybe be­ you awake, Emily? Can I get you something?" And the answer is always the same: cause we moved so much. "No, I'm all right, go back to sleep, Mother." There was a boy she loved painfully through two school semesters. Months They persuaded me at the clinic to send her away to a convalescent home in later she told me how she had taken pennies from my purse to buy him candy. the country where "she can have the kind of food and care you can't manage for "Licorice was his favorite and I brought him some every day, but he still liked her, and you'll be free to concentrate on the new baby." They still send children Jennifer better'n me. Why, Mommy?" The kind of question for which there is no to that place. I see pictures on the society page of sleek young women planning answer. affairs to raise money for it, or dancing at the affairs, or decorating Easter eggs or School was a worry to her. She was not glib or quick in a world where glib­ filling Christmas stockings for the children. ness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn. To her overworked They never have a picture of the children so I do not know if the girls still and exasperated teachers she was an overconscientious "slow learner" who kept wear those gigantic red bows and the ravaged looks on the every other Sunday trying to catch up and was absent entirely too often. when parents can come to visit "unless otherwise notified"-as we were notified I let her be absent, though sometimes the illness was imaginary. How differ­ the first six weeks. ent from my now-strictness about attendance with the others. I wasn't working. Oh it is a handsome place, green lawns and tall trees and fluted flower beds. We had a new baby, I was home anyhow. Sometimes, after Susan grew old High up on the balconies of each cottage the children stand, the girls in their red enough, I would keep her home from school, too, to have them all together. bows and white dresses, the boys in white suits and giant red ties. The parents Mostly Emily had asthma, and her breathing, harsh and labored, would fill stand below shrieking up to be heard and the children shriek down to be heard, the house with a curiously tranquil sound. I would bring the two old dresser and between them the invisible wall "Not To Be Contaminated by Parental mirrors and her boxes of collections to her bed. She would select beads and sin­ Germs or Physical Affection." gle earrings, bottle tops and shells, dried flowers and pebbles, old postcards and

,., 296 Tillie Olsen 1Stand Here Ironing 297 scraps, all sorts of oddments; then she and Susan would play Kingdom, setting There was so little time left at night after the kids were bedded down. She up landscapes and furniture, peopling them with action. would struggle over books,,always eating (it was in those years she developed her Those were the only times of peaceful companionship between her and Su­ enormous appetite that Is legendary in our family) and I would be ironing, or san. I have edged away from it, that poisonous feeling between them, that terri­ preparing food for the next day, or writing V-mail to Bill, or tending the baby. ble balancing of hurts and needs I had to do between the two, and did so badly, Sometimes, to make me laugh, or out of her despair, she would imitate happen. those earlier years. ings or types at school. Oh there are conflicts between the others too, each one human, needing, de­ I think I said once: "Why don't you do something like this in the school am­ manding, hurting, taking-but only between Emily and Susan, no, Emily to­ ateur show?" One morning she phoned me at work, hardly understandable ward Susan that corroding resentment. It seems so obvious on the surface, yet it through the weeping: "Mother, I did it. I won, I won; they gave me first prize; is not obvious. Susan, the second child, Susan, golden- and curly-haired and they clapped and clapped and wouldn't let me go." chubby, quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as Emily was not; Susan, not able to resist Emily's precious things, losing or some­ she had been in anonymity. times clumsily breaking them; Susan telling jokes and riddles to company for She began to be asked to perform at other high schools, even in colleges, applause while Emily sat silent (to say to me later: that was my riddle, Mother, I then at city and statewide affairs. The first one we went to, I only recognized her told it to Susan); Susan, who for all the five years' difference in age was just a year that first moment when thin, shy, she almost drowned herself into the curtains. behind Emily in developing physically. Then: Was this Emily? The control, the command, the convulsing and deadly I am glad for that slow physical development that widened the difference clowning, the spell. then the roaring, stamping audience, unwilling to let this between her and her contemporaries, though she suffered over it. She was too rare and precious laughter out of their lives. vulnerable for that terrible world of youthful competition, of preening and Afterwards: You ought to do something about her with a gift like that-but parading, of constant measuring of yourself against every other, of envy, "If I without money or knowing how, what does one do? We have left it all to her, had that copper hair," "If I had that skin...." She tormented herself enough and the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as been used and about not looking like the others, there was enough of the unsureness, the hav­ growing. ing to be conscious of words before you speak, the constant caring-what are She is coming. She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful they thinking of me? without having it all magnified by the merciless physical step, and I know she is happy toriight. Whatever it was that occasioned your call drives. did not happen today. Ronnie is calling. He is wet and I change him. It is rare there is such a cry "Aren't you ever going to fInish the ironing, Mother? Whistler painted his now. That time of motherhood is almost behind me when the ear is not one's mother in a rocker. I'd have to paint mine standing over an ironing board." This own but must always be racked and listening for the child cry, the child call. We is one of her communicative nights and she tells me everything and nothing as sit for a while and I hold him, looking out over the city spread in charcoal with she fixes herself a plate of food out of the icebox. its soft aisles of light. "Shoogily," he breathes and curls closer. I carry him back to She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were you con­ bed, asleep. Shoogily. A funny word, a family word, inherited from Emily, in­ cerned? She will find her way. vented by her to say: comfort. She starts up the stairs to bed. "Don't get me up with the rest in the morn­ In this and other ways she leaves her seal, I say aloud. And startle at my say­ ing.""But I thought you were having midterms." "Oh, those," she comes back in, ing it. What do I mean? What did I start to gather together, to try and make co­ kisses me, and says quite lightly, "in a couple of years when we'll all be atom­ herent? I was at the terrible, growing years. War years. I do not remember them dead they won't matter a bit." well. I was working. there were four smaller ones now, there was not time for her. She has said it before. She believes it. But because I have been dredging the She had to help be a mother, and housekeeper, and shopper. She had to set her past, and all that compounds a human being is so heavy and meaningful in me, I seal. Mornings of crisis and near hysteria trying to get lunches packed, hair cannot endure it tonight. combed, coats and shoes found, everyone to school or Child Care on time, the I will never total it all. I will never come in to say: She was a child seldom baby ready for transportation. And always the paper scribbled on by a smaller smiled at. Her father left me before she was a year old. I had to work her first six one, the book looked at by Susan then mislaid, the homework not done. Run­ years when there was work, or I sent her home and to his relatives. There were ning out to that huge school where she was one, she was lost, she was a drop; suf­ years she had care she hated. She was dark and thin and foreign-looking in a fering over the unpreparedness, stammering and unsure in her classes. world where the prestige went to blondeness and curly hair and dimples, she was 296 Tillie Olsen I Stand Here Ironing 297 scraps, all sorts of oddments; then she and Susan would play Kingdom, setting There was so little time left at night after the kids were bedded down. She up landscapes and furniture, peopling them with action. would struggle over books"always eating (it was in those years she developed her Those were the only times of peaceful companionship between her and Su­ enormous appetite that is legendary in our family) and I would be ironing, or san. I have edged away from it, that poisonous feeling between them, that terri­ preparing food for the next day, or writing V-mail to Bill, or tending the baby. ble balancing of hurts and needs I had to do between the two, and did so badly, Sometimes, to make me laugh, or out of her despair, she would imitate happen­ those earlier years. ings or types at school. Oh there are conflicts between the others too, each one human, needing, de­ I think I said once: "Why don't you do something like this in the school am­ manding, hurting, taking-but only between Emily and Susan, no, Emily to­ ateur show?" One morning she phoned me at work, hardly understandable ward Susan that corroding resentment. It seems so obvious on the surface, yet it through the weeping: "Mother, I did it. I won, I won; they gave me first prize; is not obvious. Susan, the second child, Susan, golden- and curly-haired and they clapped and clapped and wouldn't let me go." chubby, quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as Emily was not; Susan, not able to resist Emily's precious things, losing or some­ she had been in anonymity. times clumsily breaking them; Susan telling jokes and riddles to company for She began to be asked to perform at other high schools, even in colleges, applause while Emily sat silent (to say to me later: that was my riddle, Mother, I then at city and statewide affairs. The first one we went to, I only recogniz.ed her told it to Susan); Susan. who for all the five years' difference in age was just a year that first moment when thin, shy, she almost drowned herself into the curtains. behind Emily in developing physically. Then: Was this Emily? The control, the command, the convulsing and deadly I am glad for that slow physical development that widened the difference clowning, the spell, then the roaring, stamping audience, unwilling to let this between her and her contemporaries, though she suffered over it. She was too rare and precious laughter out of their lives. vulnerable for that terrible world of youthful competition, of preening and Afterwards: You ought to do something about her with a gift like that-but parading, of constant measuring of yourself against every other, of envy. "If I without money or knowing how, what does one do? We have left it all to her, had that copper hair:' "If I had that skin...." She tormented herself enough and the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted. as been used and about not looking like the others, there was enough of the unsureness, the hav­ growing. ing to be conscious of words before you speak, the constant caring-what are She is coming. She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful they thinking of me? without having it all magnified by the merciless physical step. and I know she is happy toriight. Whatever it was that occasioned your call drives. did not happen today. Ronnie is calling. He is wet and I change him. It is rare there is such a cry "Aren't you ever going to finish the ironing, Mother? Whistler painted his now. That time of motherhood is almost behind me when the ear is not one's mother in a rocker. I'd have to paint mine standing over an ironing board." This own but must always be racked and listening for the child cry, the child call. We is one of her communicative nights and she tells me everything and nothing as sit for a while and I hold him. looking out over the city spread in charcoal with she fixes herself a plate of food out of the icebox. its soft aisles of light. "Shoogily:' he breathes and curls closer. I carry him back to She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were you con­ bed, asleep. Shoogily. A funny word, a family word, inherited from Emily, in­ cerned? She will find her way. vented by her to say: comfort. She starts up the stairs to bed. "Don't get me up with the rest in the morn­ In this and other ways she leaves her seal, I say aloud. And startle at my say­ ing:' "But I thought you were having midterms." "Oh, those," she comes back in, ing it. What do I mean? What did I start to gather together, to try and make co­ kisses me, and says quite lightly, "in a couple of years when we'll all be atom­ herent? I was at the terrible, growing years. War years. I do not remember them dead they won't matter a bit." well. I was working, there were four smaller ones now, there was not time for her. She has said it before. She believes it. But because I have been dredging the She had to help be a mother, and housekeeper, and shopper. She had to set her past. and all that compounds a human being is so heavy and meaningful in me, I seal. Mornings of crisis and near hysteria trying to get lunches packed, hair cannot endure it tonight. combed, coats and shoes found, everyone to school or Child Care on time, the I will never total it all. I will never come in to say: She was a child seldom baby ready for transportation. And always the paper scribbled on by a smaller smiled at. Her father left me before she was a year old. I had to work her first six one, the book looked at by Susan then mislaid, the homework not done. Run­ years when there was work, or I sent her home and to his relatives. There were ning out to that huge school where she was one, she was lost, she was a drop; suf­ years she had care she hated. She was dark and thin and foreign-looking in a fering over the unpreparedness, stammering and unsure in her classes. world where the prestige went to blondeness and curly hair and dimples, she was 298 Tillie OIsm

slow where glibness was prized. She was a child of anxious, not proud, love. We were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth. I was a young mother, I was a distracted mother. There were other children pushing up, de­ POETRY manding. Her younger sister seemed all that she was not. There were years she did not want me to touch her. She kept too much in herself, her life was such she ;/:1 .. had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came too late. She has much to her ;1 and probably little will come of it. She is a child of her age, of depression, ofwar, of fear. Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloom-but in how many does it?

:'i There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know-help make it so there is cause for her to know-that she is more than this dress on the ironing board. helpless before the iron. 1961

~ I -I

I I

t",,'

.. ~ :1 (¥ Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" by Joyce Carol Oates (1966)

for Bob Dylan

Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people's faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything and who hadn't much reason any longer to look at her own face, always scolded Connie about it. "Stop gawking at yourself. Who are you? You think you're so pretty?" she would say. Connie would raise her eyebrows at these familiar old complaints and look right through her mother, into a shadowy vision of herself as she was right at that moment: she knew she was pretty and that was everything. Her mother had been pretty once too, if you could believe those old snapshots in the album, but now her looks were gone and that was why she was always after Connie.

"Why don't you keep your room clean like your sister? How've you got your hair fixed—what the hell stinks? Hair spray? You don't see your sister using that junk."

Her sister June was twenty-four and still lived at home. She was a secretary in the high school Connie attended, and if that wasn't bad enough—with her in the same building—she was so plain and chunky and steady that Connie had to hear her praised all the time by her mother and her mother's sisters. June did this, June did that, she saved money and helped clean the house and cooked and Connie couldn't do a thing, her mind was all filled with trashy daydreams. Their father was away at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed. He didn't bother talking much to them, but around his bent head Connie's mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over. "She makes me want to throw up sometimes," she complained to her friends. She had a high, breathless, amused voice that made everything she said sound a little forced, whether it was sincere or not.

There was one good thing: June went places with girl friends of hers, girls who were just as plain and steady as she, and so when Connie wanted to do that her mother had no objections. The father of Connie's best girl friend drove the girls the three miles to town and left them at a shopping plaza so they could walk through the stores or go to a movie, and when he came to pick them up again at eleven he never bothered to ask what they had done.

They must have been familiar sights, walking around the shopping plaza in their shorts and flat ballerina slippers that always scuffed the sidewalk, with charm bracelets jingling on their thin wrists; they would lean together to whisper and laugh secretly if someone passed who amused or interested them. Connie had long dark blond hair that drew anyone's eye to it, and she wore part of it pulled up on her head and puffed out and the rest of it she let fall down her back. She wore a pull-over jersey blouse that looked one way when she was at home and another way when she was away from home. Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that was not home: her walk, which could be childlike and bobbing, or languid enough to make anyone think she was hearing music in her head; her mouth, which was pale and smirking most of the time, but bright and pink on these evenings out; her laugh, which was cynical and drawling at home—"Ha, ha, very funny,"—but highpitched and nervous anywhere else, like the jingling of the charms on her bracelet.

Sometimes they did go shopping or to a movie, but sometimes they went across the highway, ducking fast across the busy road, to a drive-in restaurant where older kids hung out. The restaurant was shaped like a big bottle, though squatter than a real bottle, and on its cap was a revolving figure of a grinning boy holding a hamburger aloft. One night in midsummer they ran across, breathless with daring, and right away someone leaned out a car window and invited them over, but it was just a boy from high school they didn't like. It made them feel good to be able to ignore him. They went up through the maze of parked and cruising cars to the bright- lit, fly-infested restaurant, their faces pleased and expectant as if they were entering a sacred building that loomed up out of the night to give them what haven and blessing they yearned for. They sat at the counter and crossed their legs at the ankles, their thin shoulders rigid with excitement, and listened to the music that made everything so good: the music was always in the background, like music at a church service; it was something to depend upon.

A boy named Eddie came in to talk with them. He sat backwards on his stool, turning himself jerkily around in semicircles and then stopping and turning back again, and after a while he asked Connie if she would like something to eat. She said she would and so she tapped her friend's arm on her way out—her friend pulled her face up into a brave, droll look—and Connie said she would meet her at eleven, across the way. "I just hate to leave her like that," Connie said earnestly, but the boy said that she wouldn't be alone for long. So they went out to his car, and on the way Connie couldn't help but let her eyes wander over the windshields and faces all around her, her face gleaming with a joy that had nothing to do with Eddie or even this place; it might have been the music. She drew her shoulders up and sucked in her breath with the pure pleasure of being alive, and just at that moment she happened to glance at a face just a few feet from hers. It was a boy with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold. He stared at her and then his lips widened into a grin. Connie slit her eyes at him and turned away, but she couldn't help glancing back and there he was, still watching her. He wagged a finger and laughed and said, "Gonna get you, baby," and Connie turned away again without

file:///Macintosh%20HD/Desktop%20Folder/oates_going.html (1 of 9) [3/10/2003 9:13:55 AM] Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"

Eddie noticing anything.

She spent three hours with him, at the restaurant where they ate hamburgers and drank Cokes in wax cups that were always sweating, and then down an alley a mile or so away, and when he left her off at five to eleven only the movie house was still open at the plaza. Her girl friend was there, talking with a boy. When Connie came up, the two girls smiled at each other and Connie said, "How was the movie?" and the girl said, 'You should know." They rode off with the girl's father, sleepy and pleased, and Connie couldn't help but look back at the darkened shopping plaza with its big empty parking lot and its signs that were faded and ghostly now, and over at the drive-in restaurant where cars were still circling tirelessly. She couldn't hear the music at this distance.

Next morning June asked her how the movie was and Connie said, "So-so."

She and that girl and occasionally another girl went out several times a week, and the rest of the time Connie spent around the house—it was summer vacation—getting in her mother s way and thinking, dreaming about the boys she met. But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July. Connie's mother kept dragging her back to the daylight by finding things for her to do or saying suddenly, 'What's this about the Pettinger girl?"

And Connie would say nervously, "Oh, her. That dope." She always drew thick clear lines between herself and such girls, and her mother was simple and kind enough to believe it. Her mother was so simple, Connie thought, that it was maybe cruel to fool her so much. Her mother went scuffling around the house in old bedroom slippers and complained over the telephone to one sister about the other, then the other called up and the two of them complained about the third one. If June's name was mentioned her mother's tone was approving, and if Connie's name was mentioned it was disapproving. This did not really mean she disliked Connie, and actually Connie thought that her mother preferred her to June just because she was prettier, but the two of them kept up a pretense of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over something of little value to either of them. Sometimes, over coffee, they were almost friends, but something would come up—some vexation that was like a fly buzzing suddenly around their heads—and their faces went hard with contempt.

One Sunday Connie got up at eleven—none of them bothered with church—and washed her hair so that it could dry all day long in the sun. Her parents and sister were going to a barbecue at an aunt's house and Connie said no, she wasn't interested, rolling her eyes to let her mother know just what she thought of it. "Stay home alone then," her mother said sharply. Connie sat out back in a lawn chair and watched them drive away, her father quiet and bald, hunched around so that he could back the car out, her mother with a look that was still angry and not at all softened through the windshield, and in the back seat poor old June, all dressed up as if she didn't know what a barbecue was, with all the running yelling kids and the flies. Connie sat with her eyes closed in the sun, dreaming and dazed with the warmth about her as if this were a kind of love, the caresses of love, and her mind slipped over onto thoughts of the boy she had been with the night before and how nice he had been, how sweet it always was, not the way someone like June would suppose but sweet, gentle, the way it was in movies and promised in songs; and when she opened her eyes she hardly knew where she was, the back yard ran off into weeds and a fence-like line of trees and behind it the sky was perfectly blue and still. The asbestos ranch house that was now three years old startled her—it looked small. She shook her head as if to get awake.

It was too hot. She went inside the house and turned on the radio to drown out the quiet. She sat on the edge of her bed, barefoot, and listened for an hour and a half to a program called XYZ Sunday Jamboree, record after record of hard, fast, shrieking songs she sang along with, interspersed by exclamations from "Bobby King": "An' look here, you girls at Napoleon's—Son and Charley want you to pay real close attention to this song coming up!"

And Connie paid close attention herself, bathed in a glow of slow-pulsed joy that seemed to rise mysteriously out of the music itself and lay languidly about the airless little room, breathed in and breathed out with each gentle rise and fall of her chest.

After a while she heard a car coming up the drive. She sat up at once, startled, because it couldn't be her father so soon. The gravel kept crunching all the way in from the road—the driveway was long—and Connie ran to the window. It was a car she didn't know. It was an open jalopy, painted a bright gold that caught the sunlight opaquely. Her heart began to pound and her fingers snatched at her hair, checking it, and she whispered, "Christ. Christ," wondering how bad she looked. The car came to a stop at the side door and the horn sounded four short taps, as if this were a signal Connie knew.

She went into the kitchen and approached the door slowly, then hung out the screen door, her bare toes curling down off the step. There were two boys in the car and now she recognized the driver: he had shaggy, shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig and he was grinning at her.

"I ain't late, am I?" he said.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Connie said.

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"Toldja I'd be out, didn't I?"

"I don't even know who you are."

She spoke sullenly, careful to show no interest or pleasure, and he spoke in a fast, bright monotone. Connie looked past him to the other boy, taking her time. He had fair brown hair, with a lock that fell onto his forehead. His sideburns gave him a fierce, embarrassed look, but so far he hadn't even bothered to glance at her. Both boys wore sunglasses. The driver's glasses were metallic and mirrored everything in miniature.

"You wanta come for a ride?" he said.

Connie smirked and let her hair fall loose over one shoulder.

"Don'tcha like my car? New paint job," he said. "Hey."

"What?"

"You're cute."

She pretended to fidget, chasing flies away from the door.

"Don'tcha believe me, or what?" he said.

"Look, I don't even know who you are," Connie said in disgust.

"Hey, Ellie's got a radio, see. Mine broke down." He lifted his friend's arm and showed her the little transistor radio the boy was holding, and now Connie began to hear the music. It was the same program that was playing inside the house.

"Bobby King?" she said.

"I listen to him all the time. I think he's great."

"He's kind of great," Connie said reluctantly.

"Listen, that guy's great. He knows where the action is."

Connie blushed a little, because the glasses made it impossible for her to see just what this boy was looking at. She couldn't decide if she liked him or if he was just a jerk, and so she dawdled in the doorway and wouldn't come down or go back inside. She said, "What's all that stuff painted on your car?"

"Can'tcha read it?" He opened the door very carefully, as if he were afraid it might fall off. He slid out just as carefully, planting his feet firmly on the ground, the tiny metallic world in his glasses slowing down like gelatine hardening, and in the midst of it Connie's bright green blouse. "This here is my name, to begin with, he said. ARNOLD FRIEND was written in tarlike black letters on the side, with a drawing of a round, grinning face that reminded Connie of a pumpkin, except it wore sunglasses. "I wanta introduce myself, I'm Arnold Friend and that's my real name and I'm gonna be your friend, honey, and inside the car's Ellie Oscar, he's kinda shy." Ellie brought his transistor radio up to his shoulder and balanced it there. "Now, these numbers are a secret code, honey," Arnold Friend explained. He read off the numbers 33, 19, 17 and raised his eyebrows at her to see what she thought of that, but she didn't think much of it. The left rear fender had been smashed and around it was written, on the gleaming gold background: DONE BY CRAZY WOMAN DRIVER. Connie had to laugh at that. Arnold Friend was pleased at her laughter and looked up at her. "Around the other side's a lot more —you wanta come and see them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Why should I?"

"Don'tcha wanta see what's on the car? Don'tcha wanta go for a ride?"

"I don't know."

"Why not?"

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"I got things to do."

"Like what?"

"Things."

He laughed as if she had said something funny. He slapped his thighs. He was standing in a strange way, leaning back against the car as if he were balancing himself. He wasn't tall, only an inch or so taller than she would be if she came down to him. Connie liked the way he was dressed, which was the way all of them dressed: tight faded jeans stuffed into black, scuffed boots, a belt that pulled his waist in and showed how lean he was, and a white pull-over shirt that was a little soiled and showed the hard small muscles of his arms and shoulders. He looked as if he probably did hard work, lifting and carrying things. Even his neck looked muscular. And his face was a familiar face, somehow: the jaw and chin and cheeks slightly darkened because he hadn't shaved for a day or two, and the nose long and hawklike, sniffing as if she were a treat he was going to gobble up and it was all a joke.

"Connie, you ain't telling the truth. This is your day set aside for a ride with me and you know it," he said, still laughing. The way he straightened and recovered from his fit of laughing showed that it had been all fake.

"How do you know what my name is?" she said suspiciously.

"It's Connie."

"Maybe and maybe not."

"I know my Connie," he said, wagging his finger. Now she remembered him even better, back at the restaurant, and her cheeks warmed at the thought of how she had sucked in her breath just at the moment she passed him—how she must have looked to him. And he had remembered her. "Ellie and I come out here especially for you," he said. "Ellie can sit in back. How about it?"

"Where?"

"Where what?"

"Where're we going?"

He looked at her. He took off the sunglasses and she saw how pale the skin around his eyes was, like holes that were not in shadow but instead in light. His eyes were like chips of broken glass that catch the light in an amiable way. He smiled. It was as if the idea of going for a ride somewhere, to someplace, was a new idea to him.

"Just for a ride, Connie sweetheart."

"I never said my name was Connie," she said.

"But I know what it is. I know your name and all about you, lots of things," Arnold Friend said. He had not moved yet but stood still leaning back against the side of his jalopy. "I took a special interest in you, such a pretty girl, and found out all about you—like I know your parents and sister are gone somewheres and I know where and how long they're going to be gone, and I know who you were with last night, and your best girl friend's name is Betty. Right?"

He spoke in a simple lilting voice, exactly as if he were reciting the words to a song. His smile assured her that everything was fine. In the car Ellie turned up the volume on his radio and did not bother to look around at them.

"Ellie can sit in the back seat," Arnold Friend said. He indicated his friend with a casual jerk of his chin, as if Ellie did not count and she should not bother with him.

"How'd you find out all that stuff?" Connie said.

"Listen: Betty Schultz and Tony Fitch and Jimmy Pettinger and Nancy Pettinger," he said in a chant. "Raymond Stanley and Bob Hutter—"

"Do you know all those kids?"

"I know everybody."

"Look, you're kidding. You're not from around here."

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"Sure."

"But—how come we never saw you before?"

"Sure you saw me before," he said. He looked down at his boots, as if he were a little offended. "You just don't remember."

"I guess I'd remember you," Connie said.

"Yeah?" He looked up at this, beaming. He was pleased. He began to mark time with the music from Ellie's radio, tapping his fists lightly together. Connie looked away from his smile to the car, which was painted so bright it almost hurt her eyes to look at it. She looked at that name, ARNOLD FRIEND. And up at the front fender was an expression that was familiar—MAN THE FLYING SAUCERS. It was an expression kids had used the year before but didn't use this year. She looked at it for a while as if the words meant something to her that she did not yet know.

"What're you thinking about? Huh?" Arnold Friend demanded. "Not worried about your hair blowing around in the car, are you?"

"No."

"Think I maybe can't drive good?"

"How do I know?"

"You're a hard girl to handle. How come?" he said. "Don't you know I'm your friend? Didn't you see me put my sign in the air when you walked by?"

"What sign?"

"My sign." And he drew an X in the air, leaning out toward her. They were maybe ten feet apart. After his hand fell back to his side the X was still in the air, almost visible. Connie let the screen door close and stood perfectly still inside it, listening to the music from her radio and the boy's blend together. She stared at Arnold Friend. He stood there so stiffly relaxed, pretending to be relaxed, with one hand idly on the door handle as if he were keeping himself up that way and had no intention of ever moving again. She recognized most things about him, the tight jeans that showed his thighs and buttocks and the greasy leather boots and the tight shirt, and even that slippery friendly smile of his, that sleepy dreamy smile that all the boys used to get across ideas they didn't want to put into words. She recognized all this and also the singsong way he talked, slightly mocking, kidding, but serious and a little melancholy, and she recognized the way he tapped one fist against the other in homage to the perpetual music behind him. But all these things did not come together.

She said suddenly, "Hey, how old are you?"

His smiled faded. She could see then that he wasn't a kid, he was much older—thirty, maybe more. At this knowledge her heart began to pound faster.

"That's a crazy thing to ask. Can'tcha see I'm your own age?"

"Like hell you are."

"Or maybe a couple years older. I'm eighteen."

"Eighteen?" she said doubtfully.

He grinned to reassure her and lines appeared at the corners of his mouth. His teeth were big and white. He grinned so broadly his eyes became slits and she saw how thick the lashes were, thick and black as if painted with a black tarlike material. Then, abruptly, he seemed to become embarrassed and looked over his shoulder at Ellie. "Him, he's crazy," he said. "Ain't he a riot? He's a nut, a real character." Ellie was still listening to the music. His sunglasses told nothing about what he was thinking. He wore a bright orange shirt unbuttoned halfway to show his chest, which was a pale, bluish chest and not muscular like Arnold Friend's. His shirt collar was turned up all around and the very tips of the collar pointed out past his chin as if they were protecting him. He was pressing the transistor radio up against his ear and sat there in a kind of daze, right in the sun.

"He's kinda strange," Connie said.

"Hey, she says you're kinda strange! Kinda strange!" Arnold Friend cried. He pounded on the car to get Ellie's attention. Ellie turned for the first time and Connie saw with shock that he wasn't a kid either—he had a fair, hairless face, cheeks reddened slightly as if the veins grew too close to the surface of his skin, the face of a forty-year-old baby. Connie felt a wave of dizziness rise in her at

file:///Macintosh%20HD/Desktop%20Folder/oates_going.html (5 of 9) [3/10/2003 9:13:55 AM] Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" this sight and she stared at him as if waiting for something to change the shock of the moment, make it all right again. Ellie's lips kept shaping words, mumbling along with the words blasting in his ear.

"Maybe you two better go away," Connie said faintly.

"What? How come?" Arnold Friend cried. "We come out here to take you for a ride. It's Sunday." He had the voice of the man on the radio now. It was the same voice, Connie thought. "Don'tcha know it's Sunday all day? And honey, no matter who you were with last night, today you're with Arnold Friend and don't you forget it! Maybe you better step out here," he said, and this last was in a different voice. It was a little flatter, as if the heat was finally getting to him.

"No. I got things to do."

"Hey."

"You two better leave."

"We ain't leaving until you come with us."

"Like hell I am—"

"Connie, don't fool around with me. I mean—I mean, don't fool around," he said, shaking his head. He laughed incredulously. He placed his sunglasses on top of his head, carefully, as if he were indeed wearing a wig, and brought the stems down behind his ears. Connie stared at him, another wave of dizziness and fear rising in her so that for a moment he wasn't even in focus but was just a blur standing there against his gold car, and she had the idea that he had driven up the driveway all right but had come from nowhere before that and belonged nowhere and that everything about him and even about the music that was so familiar to her was only half real.

"If my father comes and sees you—"

"He ain't coming. He's at a barbecue."

"How do you know that?"

"Aunt Tillie's. Right now they're uh—they're drinking. Sitting around," he said vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way to town and over to Aunt Tillie's back yard. Then the vision seemed to get clear and he nodded energetically. "Yeah. Sitting around. There's your sister in a blue dress, huh? And high heels, the poor sad bitch—nothing like you, sweetheart! And your mother's helping some fat woman with the corn, they're cleaning the corn—husking the corn—"

"What fat woman?" Connie cried.

"How do I know what fat woman, I don't know every goddamn fat woman in the world!" Arnold Friend laughed.

"Oh, that's Mrs. Hornsby . . . . Who invited her?" Connie said. She felt a little lightheaded. Her breath was coming quickly.

"She's too fat. I don't like them fat. I like them the way you are, honey," he said, smiling sleepily at her. They stared at each other for a while through the screen door. He said softly, "Now, what you're going to do is this: you're going to come out that door. You re going to sit up front with me and Ellie's going to sit in the back, the hell with Ellie, right? This isn't Ellie's date. You're my date. I'm your lover, honey."

"What? You're crazy—"

"Yes, I'm your lover. You don't know what that is but you will," he said. "I know that too. I know all about you. But look: it's real nice and you couldn't ask for nobody better than me, or more polite. I always keep my word. I'll tell you how it is, I'm always nice at first, the first time. I'll hold you so tight you won't think you have to try to get away or pretend anything because you'll know you can't. And I'll come inside you where it's all secret and you'll give in to me and you'll love me "

"Shut up! You're crazy!" Connie said. She backed away from the door. She put her hands up against her ears as if she'd heard something terrible, something not meant for her. "People don't talk like that, you're crazy," she muttered. Her heart was almost too big now for her chest and its pumping made sweat break out all over her. She looked out to see Arnold Friend pause and then take a step toward the porch, lurching. He almost fell. But, like a clever drunken man, he managed to catch his balance. He wobbled in his high boots and grabbed hold of one of the porch posts.

"Honey?" he said. "You still listening?"

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"Get the hell out of here!"

"Be nice, honey. Listen."

"I'm going to call the police—"

He wobbled again and out of the side of his mouth came a fast spat curse, an aside not meant for her to hear. But even this "Christ!" sounded forced. Then he began to smile again. She watched this smile come, awkward as if he were smiling from inside a mask. His whole face was a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down to his throat but then running out as if he had plastered make- up on his face but had forgotten about his throat.

"Honey—? Listen, here's how it is. I always tell the truth and I promise you this: I ain't coming in that house after you."

"You better not! I'm going to call the police if you—if you don't—"

"Honey," he said, talking right through her voice, "honey, I m not coming in there but you are coming out here. You know why?"

She was panting. The kitchen looked like a place she had never seen before, some room she had run inside but that wasn't good enough, wasn't going to help her. The kitchen window had never had a curtain, after three years, and there were dishes in the sink for her to do—probably—and if you ran your hand across the table you'd probably feel something sticky there.

"You listening, honey? Hey?" "—going to call the police—"

"Soon as you touch the phone I don't need to keep my promise and can come inside. You won't want that."

She rushed forward and tried to lock the door. Her fingers were shaking. "But why lock it," Arnold Friend said gently, talking right into her face. "It's just a screen door. It's just nothing." One of his boots was at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn't in it. It pointed out to the left, bent at the ankle. "I mean, anybody can break through a screen door and glass and wood and iron or anything else if he needs to, anybody at all, and specially Arnold Friend. If the place got lit up with a fire, honey, you'd come runnin' out into my arms, right into my arms an' safe at home—like you knew I was your lover and'd stopped fooling around. I don't mind a nice shy girl but I don't like no fooling around." Part of those words were spoken with a slight rhythmic lilt, and Connie somehow recognized them—the echo of a song from last year, about a girl rushing into her boy friend's arms and coming home again—

Connie stood barefoot on the linoleum floor, staring at him. "What do you want?" she whispered.

"I want you," he said.

"What?"

"Seen you that night and thought, that's the one, yes sir. I never needed to look anymore."

"But my father's coming back. He's coming to get me. I had to wash my hair first—'' She spoke in a dry, rapid voice, hardly raising it for him to hear.

"No, your daddy is not coming and yes, you had to wash your hair and you washed it for me. It's nice and shining and all for me. I thank you sweetheart," he said with a mock bow, but again he almost lost his balance. He had to bend and adjust his boots. Evidently his feet did not go all the way down; the boots must have been stuffed with something so that he would seem taller. Connie stared out at him and behind him at Ellie in the car, who seemed to be looking off toward Connie's right, into nothing. This Ellie said, pulling the words out of the air one after another as if he were just discovering them, "You want me to pull out the phone?"

"Shut your mouth and keep it shut," Arnold Friend said, his face red from bending over or maybe from embarrassment because Connie had seen his boots. "This ain't none of your business."

"What—what are you doing? What do you want?" Connie said. "If I call the police they'll get you, they'll arrest you—"

"Promise was not to come in unless you touch that phone, and I'll keep that promise," he said. He resumed his erect position and tried to force his shoulders back. He sounded like a hero in a movie, declaring something important. But he spoke too loudly and it was as if he were speaking to someone behind Connie. "I ain't made plans for coming in that house where I don't belong but just for you to come out to me, the way you should. Don't you know who I am?"

"You're crazy," she whispered. She backed away from the door but did not want to go into another part of the house, as if this would

file:///Macintosh%20HD/Desktop%20Folder/oates_going.html (7 of 9) [3/10/2003 9:13:55 AM] Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" give him permission to come through the door. "What do you . . . you're crazy, you. . . ."

"Huh? What're you saying, honey?"

Her eyes darted everywhere in the kitchen. She could not remember what it was, this room.

"This is how it is, honey: you come out and we'll drive away, have a nice ride. But if you don't come out we're gonna wait till your people come home and then they're all going to get it."

"You want that telephone pulled out?" Ellie said. He held the radio away from his ear and grimaced, as if without the radio the air was too much for him.

"I toldja shut up, Ellie," Arnold Friend said, "you're deaf, get a hearing aid, right? Fix yourself up. This little girl's no trouble and's gonna be nice to me, so Ellie keep to yourself, this ain't your date right? Don't hem in on me, don't hog, don't crush, don't bird dog, don't trail me," he said in a rapid, meaningless voice, as if he were running through all the expressions he'd learned but was no longer sure which of them was in style, then rushing on to new ones, making them up with his eyes closed. "Don't crawl under my fence, don't squeeze in my chipmonk hole, don't sniff my glue, suck my popsicle, keep your own greasy fingers on yourself!" He shaded his eyes and peered in at Connie, who was backed against the kitchen table. "Don't mind him, honey, he's just a creep. He's a dope. Right? I'm the boy for you, and like I said, you come out here nice like a lady and give me your hand, and nobody else gets hurt, I mean, your nice old bald-headed daddy and your mummy and your sister in her high heels. Because listen: why bring them in this?"

"Leave me alone," Connie whispered.

"Hey, you know that old woman down the road, the one with the chickens and stuff—you know her?"

"She's dead!"

"Dead? What? You know her?" Arnold Friend said.

"She's dead—"

"Don't you like her?"

"She's dead—she's—she isn't here any more—"

But don't you like her, I mean, you got something against her? Some grudge or something?" Then his voice dipped as if he were conscious of a rudeness. He touched the sunglasses perched up on top of his head as if to make sure they were still there. "Now, you be a good girl."

'What are you going to do?"

"Just two things, or maybe three," Arnold Friend said. "But I promise it won't last long and you'll like me the way you get to like people you're close to. You will. It's all over for you here, so come on out. You don't want your people in any trouble, do you?"

She turned and bumped against a chair or something, hurting her leg, but she ran into the back room and picked up the telephone. Something roared in her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fear that she could do nothing but listen to it—the telephone was clammy and very heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but were too weak to touch it. She began to scream into the phone, into the roaring. She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend was stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she was locked inside this house.

After a while she could hear again. She was sitting on the floor with her wet back against the wall.

Arnold Friend was saying from the door, "That's a good girl. Put the phone back."

She kicked the phone away from her.

"No, honey. Pick it up. Put it back right."

She picked it up and put it back. The dial tone stopped.

"That's a good girl. Now, you come outside."

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She was hollow with what had been fear but what was now just an emptiness. All that screaming had blasted it out of her. She sat, one leg cramped under her, and deep inside her brain was something like a pinpoint of light that kept going and would not let her relax. She thought, I'm not going to see my mother again. She thought, I'm not going to sleep in my bed again. Her bright green blouse was all wet.

Arnold Friend said, in a gentle-loud voice that was like a stage voice, "The place where you came from ain't there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are now—inside your daddy's house—is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any time. You know that and always did know it. You hear me?"

She thought, I have got to think. I have got to know what to do.

"We'll go out to a nice field, out in the country here where it smells so nice and it's sunny," Arnold Friend said. "I'll have my arms tight around you so you won't need to try to get away and I'll show you what love is like, what it does. The hell with this house! It looks solid all right," he said. He ran a fingernail down the screen and the noise did not make Connie shiver, as it would have the day before. "Now, put your hand on your heart, honey. Feel that? That feels solid too but we know better. Be nice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a girl like you but to be sweet and pretty and give in?—and get away before her people come back?"

She felt her pounding heart. Her hand seemed to enclose it. She thought for the first time in her life that it was nothing that was hers, that belonged to her, but just a pounding, living thing inside this body that wasn't really hers either.

"You don't want them to get hurt," Arnold Friend went on. "Now, get up, honey. Get up all by yourself."

She stood.

"Now, turn this way. That's right. Come over here to me.— Ellie, put that away, didn't I tell you? You dope. You miserable creepy dope," Arnold Friend said. His words were not angry but only part of an incantation. The incantation was kindly. "Now come out through the kitchen to me, honey, and let's see a smile, try it, you re a brave, sweet little girl and now they're eating corn and hot dogs cooked to bursting over an outdoor fire, and they don't know one thing about you and never did and honey, you're better than them because not a one of them would have done this for you."

Connie felt the linoleum under her feet; it was cool. She brushed her hair back out of her eyes. Arnold Friend let go of the post tentatively and opened his arms for her, his elbows pointing in toward each other and his wrists limp, to show that this was an embarrassed embrace and a little mocking, he didn't want to make her self-conscious.

She put out her hand against the screen. She watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were back safe somewhere in the other doorway, watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited.

"My sweet little blue-eyed girl," he said in a half-sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him—so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it.

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Jamaica Kincaid Girl

Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn't have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don't sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn't speak to wharf–rat boys, not even to give directions; don't eat fruits on the street—flies will follow you; but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a button–hole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease; this is how you iron your father's khaki pants so that they don't have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don't like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don't pick people's flowers—you might catch something; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don't like, and that way something bad won't fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?

1987

Susan Sontag

The Way We Live Now

FROM The New Yorker

AT FIRST he was just losing weight, he felt only a little ill, Max said to Ellen, and he didn't call for an appointment with his doctor, according to Greg, because he was managing to keep on working at more or less the same rhythm, but he did stop smoking, Tanya pointed out, which suggests he was frightened, but also that he wanted, even more than he knew, to be healthy, or healthier, or maybe just to gain back a few pounds, said Orson, for he told her, Tanya went on, that he expected to be climbing the walls (isn't that what people say?) and found, to his surprise, that he didn't miss cigarettes at all and reveled in the sensation of his lungs' being ache-free for the first time in years. But did he have a good doctor, Stephen wanted to know, since it would have been crazy not to go for a checkup after the pressure was off and he was back from the conference in Helsinki, even if by then he was feeling better. And he said, to Frank, that he would go, even though he was indeed frightened, as he admitted to Jan, but who wouldn't be frightened now, though, odd as that might seem, he hadn't been worrying until recently, he avowed to Quentin, it was only in the last six months that he had the metallic taste of panic in his mouth, because becoming seriously ill was some- thing that happened to other people, a normal delusion, he observed to Paolo, if one was thirty-eight and had never had a serious illness; he wasn't, as Jan confirmed, a hypochondriac. Of course, it was hard not to worry, everyone was worried, but it wouldn't do to panic, because, as Max pointed out to Quentin, there wasn't anything one could do except wait and hope, wait and start being careful, be careful, and hope. And even if one did prove to be ill, one shouldn't give up, they had new treatments that promised an arrest of the disease's inexorable course, research was progressing. It seemed that everyone was in touch with The Way We Live Now 601

everyone else several times a week, checking in, I've never spent so many hours at a time on the phone, Stephen said to Kate, and when I'm exhausted after the two or three calls made to me, giving me the latest, instead of switching off the phone to give myself a respite I tap out the number of another friend or acquaintance, to pass on the news. I'm not sure I can afford to think so much about it, Ellen said, and I suspect my own motives, there's something morbid I'm getting used to, getting excited by, this must be like what people felt in London during the Blitz. As far as I know, I'm not at risk, but you never know, said Aileen. This thing is totally unprecedented, said Frank. But don't you think he ought to see a doctor, Stephen insisted. Listen, said Orson, you can't force people to take care of themselves, and what makes you think the worst, he could be just run down, people still do get ordinary illnesses, awful ones, why are you assuming it has to be that. But all I want to be sure, said Stephen, is that he understands the options, because most people don't, that's why they won't see a doctor or have the test, they think there's nothing one can do. But is there anything one can do, he said to Tanya (according to Greg), I mean what do I gain if I go to the doctor; if I'm really ill, he's reported to have said, I'll find out soon enough.

And when he was in the hospital, his spirits seemed to lighten, accord- ing to Donny. He seemed more cheerful than he had been in the last months, Ursula said, and the bad news seemed to come almost as a relief, according to Ira, as a truly unexpected blow, according to Quentin, but you'd hardly expect him to have said the same thing to all his friends, because his relation to Ira was so different from his rela- tion to Quentin (this according to Quentin, who was proud of their friendship), and perhaps he thought Quentin wouldn't be undone by seeing him weep, but Ira insisted that couldn't be the reason he behaved so differently with each, and that maybe he was feeling less shocked, mobilizing his strength to fight for his life, at the moment he saw Ira but overcome by feelings of hopelessness when Quentin arrived with flowers, because anyway the flowers threw him into a bad mood, as Quentin told Kate, since the hospital room was choked with flowers, you couldn't have crammed another flower into that room, but surely you're exaggerating, Kate said, smiling, everybody likes flowers. Well, who wouldn't exaggerate at a time like this, Quentin said sharply. Don't you think this is an exaggeration. Of course I do, said Kate gently, I was only teasing, I mean I didn't mean to tease. I know that, Quentin said, with tears in his eyes, and Kate hugged him and said well, when I go this 602 SUSAN SONTAG

evening I guess I won't bring flowers, what does he want, and Quentin said, according to Max, what he likes best is chocolate. Is there anything else, asked Kate, I mean like chocolate but not chocolate. Licorice, said Quentin, blowing his nose. And besides that. Aren't you exaggerating now, Quentin said, smiling. Right, said Kate, so if I want to bring him a whole raft of stuff, besides chocolate and licorice, what else. Jelly beans, Quentin said.

He didn't want to be alone, according to Paolo, and lots of people came in the first week, and the Jamaican nurse said there were other patients on the floor who would be glad to have the surplus flowers, and people weren't afraid to visit, it wasn't like the old days, as Kate pointed out to Aileen, they're not even segregated in the hospital anymore, as Hilda observed, there's nothing on the door of his room warning visitors of the possibility of contagion, as there was a few years ago; in fact, he's in a double room and, as he told Orson, the old guy on the far side of the curtain (who's clearly on the way out, said Stephen) doesn't even have the disease, so, as Kate went on, you really should go and see him, he'd be happy to see you, he likes having people visit, you aren't not going because you're afraid, are you. Of course not, Aileen said, but I don't know what to say, I think I'll feel awkward, which he's bound to notice, and that will make him feel worse, so I won't be doing him any good, will I. But he won't notice anything, Kate said, patting Aileen's hand, it's not like that, it's not the way you imagine, he's not judging people or wondering about their motives, he's just happy to see his friends. But I never was really a friend of his, Aileen said, you're a friend, he's always liked you, you told me he talks about Nora with you, I know he likes me, he's even attracted to me, but he respects you. But, according to Wesley, the reason Aileen was so stingy with her visits was that she could never have him to herself, there were always others there already and by the time they left still others had arrived, she'd been in love with him for years, and I can understand, said Donny, that Aileen should feel bitter that if there could have been a woman friend he did more than occasionally bed, a woman he really loved, and my God, Victor said, who had known him in those years, he was crazy about Nora, what a heart-rending couple they were, two surly angels, then it couldn't have been she.

And when some of the friends, the ones who came every day, waylaid the doctor in the corridor, Stephen was the one who asked the most The Way We Live Now 603 informed questions, who'd been keeping up not just with the stories that appeared several times a week in the Times (which Greg confessed to have stopped reading, unable to stand it anymore) but with articles in the medical journals published here and in England and France, and who knew socially one of the principal doctors in Paris who was doing some much-publicized research on the disease, but his doctor said little more than that the pneumonia was not life-threatening, the fever was subsiding, of course he was still weak but he was responding well to the antibiotics, that he'd have to complete his stay in the hospital, which entailed a minimum of twenty-one days on the IV, before she could start him on the new drug, for she was optimistic about the possibility of getting him into the protocol; and when Victor said that if he had so much trouble eating (he'd say to everyone when they coaxed him to eat some of the hospital meals, that food didn't taste right, that he had a funny metallic taste in his mouth) it couldn't be good that friends were bringing him all that chocolate, the doctor just smiled and said that in these cases the patient's morale was also an important factor, and if chocolate made him feel better she saw no harm in it, which worried Stephen, as Stephen said later to Donny, because they wanted to believe in the promises and taboos of today's high-tech medicine but here this reassuringly curt and silver-haired specialist in the disease, someone quoted frequently in the papers, was talking like some oldfangled coun- try GP who tells the family that tea with honey or chicken soup may do as much for the patient as penicillin, which might mean, as Max said, that they were just going through the motions of treating him, that they were not sure about what to do, or rather, as Xavier interjected, that they didn't know what the hell they were doing, that the truth, the real truth, as Hilda said, upping the ante, was that they didn't, the doctors, really have any hope.

Oh, no, said Lewis, I can't stand it, wait a minute, I can't believe it, are you sure, I mean are they sure, have they done all the tests, it's getting so when the phone rings I'm scared to answer because I think it will be someone telling me someone else is ill; but did Lewis really not know until yesterday, Robert said testily, I find that hard to believe, everybody is talking about it, it seems impossible that someone wouldn't have called Lewis; and perhaps Lewis did know, was for some reason pre- tending not to know already, because, Jan recalled, didn't Lewis say something months ago to Greg, and not only to Greg, about his not looking well, losing weight, and being worried about him and wishing 604 SUSAN SONTAG he'd see a doctor, so it couldn't come as a total surprise. Well, everybody is worried about everybody now, said Betsy, that seems to be the way we live, the way we live now. And, after all, they were once very close, doesn't Lewis still have the keys to his apartment, you know the way you let someone keep the keys after you've broken up, only a little because you hope the person might just saunter in, drunk or high, late some evening, but mainly because it's wise to have a few sets of keys strewn around town, if you live alone, at the top of a former commercial building that, pretentious as it is, will never acquire a doorman or even a resident superintendent, someone whom you can call on for the keys late one night if you find you've lost yours or have locked yourself out. Who else has keys, Tanya inquired, I was thinking somebody might drop by tomorrow before coming to the hospital and bring some treas- ures, because the other day, Ira said, he was complaining about how dreary the hospital room was, and how it was like being locked up in a motel room, which got everybody started telling funny stories about motel rooms they'd known, and at Ursula's story, about the Luxury Budget Inn in Schenectady, there was an uproar of laughter around his bed, while he watched them in silence, eyes bright with fever, all the while, as Victor recalled, gobbling that damned chocolate. But, accord- ing to Jan, whom Lewis's keys enabled to tour the swank of his bachelor lair with an eye to bringing over some art consolation to brighten up the hospital room, the Byzantine icon wasn't on the wall over his bed, and that was a puzzle until Orson remembered that he'd recounted without seeming upset (this disputed by Greg) that the boy he'd re- cently gotten rid of had stolen it, along with four of the maki-e lacquer boxes, as if these were objects as easy to sell on the street as a TV or a stereo. But he's always been very generous, Kate said quietly, and though he loves beautiful things isn't really attached to them, to things, as Orson said, which is unusual in a collector, as Frank commented, and when Kate shuddered and tears sprang to her eyes and Orson inquired anxiously if he, Orson, had said something wrong, she pointed out that they'd begun talking about him in a retrospective mode, summing up what he was like, what made them fond of him, as if he were finished, completed, already a part of the past.

Perhaps he was getting tired of having so many visitors, said Robert, who was, as Ellen couldn't help mentioning, someone who had come only twice and was probably looking for a reason not to be in regular attendance, but there could be no doubt, according to Ursula, that his The Way We Live Now 605 spirits had dipped, not that there was any discouraging news from the doctors, and he seemed now to prefer being alone a few hours of the day; and he told Donny that he'd begun keeping a diary for the first time in his life, because he wanted to record the course of his mental reactions to this astonishing turn of events, to do something parallel to what the doctors were doing, who came every morning and conferred at his bedside about his body, and that perhaps it wasn't so important what he wrote in it, which amounted, as he said wryly to Quentin, to little more than the usual banalities about terror and amazement that this was happening to him, to him also, plus the usual remorseful assessments of his past life, his pardonable superficialities, capped by resolves to live better, more deeply, more in touch with his work and his friends, and not to care so passionately about what people thought of him, interspersed with admonitions to himself that in this situation his will to live counted more than anything else and that if he really wanted to live, and trusted life, and liked himself well enough (down, ol' debbil Thanatos!), he would live, he would be an exception; but perhaps all this, as Quentin ruminated, talking on the phone to Kate, wasn't the point, the point was that by the very keeping of the diary he was accu- mulating something to reread one day, slyly staking out his claim to a future time, in which the diary would be an object, a relic, in which he might not actually reread it, because he would want to have put this ordeal behind him, but the diary would be there in the drawer of his stupendous Majorelle desk, and he could already, he did actually say to Quentin one late sunny afternoon, propped up in the hospital bed, with the stain of chocolate framing one corner of a heartbreaking smile, see himself in the penthouse, the October sun streaming through those clear windows instead of this streaked one, and the diary, the pathetic diary, safe inside the drawer.

It doesn't matter about the treatment's side effects, Stephen said (when talking to Max), I don't know why you're so worried about that, every strong treatment has some dangerous side effects, it's inevitable, you mean otherwise the treatment wouldn't be effective, Hilda interjected, and anyway, Stephen went on doggedly, just because there are side effects it doesn't mean he has to get them, or all of them, each one, or even some of them. That's just a list of all the possible things that could go wrong, because the doctors have to cover themselves, so they make up a worst-case scenario, but isn't what's happening to him, and to so many other people, Tanya interrupted, a worst-case scenario, a catastro- 6 SUSAN SONTAG

phe no one could have imagined, it's too cruel, and isn't everything a side effect, quipped Ira, even we are all side effects, but we're not bad side effects, Frank said, he likes having his friends around, and we're helping each other, too; because his illness sticks us all in the same glue, mused Xavier, and, whatever the jealousies and grievances from the past that have made us wary and cranky with each other, when something like this happens (the sky is falling, the sky is falling!) you understand what's really important. I agree, Chicken Little, he is reported to have said. But don't you think, Quentin observed to Max, that being as close to him as we are, making time to drop by the hospital every day, is a way of our trying to define ourselves more firmly and irrevocably as the well, those who aren't ill, who aren't going to fall ill, as if what's happened to him couldn't happen to us, when in fact the chances are that before long one of us will end up where he is, which is probably what he felt when he was one of the cohort visiting Zack in the spring (you never knew Zack, did you?), and, according to Clarice, Zack's widow, he didn't come very often, he said he hated hospitals, and didn't feel he was doing Zack any good, that Zack would see on his face how uncomfortable he was. Oh, he was one of those, Aileen said. A coward. Like me.

And after he was sent home from the hospital, and Quentin had volun- teered to move in and was cooking meals and taking telephone mes- sages and keeping the mother in Mississippi informed, well, mainly keeping her from flying to New York and heaping her grief on her son and confusing the household routine with her oppressive ministrations, he was able to work an hour or two in his study, on days he didn't insist on going out, for a meal or a movie, which tired him. He seemed optimistic, Kate thought, his appetite was good, and what he said, Orson reported, was that he agreed when Stephen advised him that the main thing was to keep in shape, he was a fighter, right, he wouldn't be who he was if he weren't, and was he ready for the big fight, Stephen asked rhetorically (as Max told it to Donny), and he said you bet, and Stephen added it could be a lot worse, you could have gotten the disease two years ago, but now so many scientists are working on it, the Ameri- can team and the French team, everyone bucking for that Nobel Prize a few years down the road, that all you have to do is stay healthy for another year or two and then there will be good treatment, real treat- ment. Yes, he said, Stephen said, my timing is good. And Betsy, who had been climbing on and rolling off macrobiotic diets for a decade, came up with a Japanese specialist she wanted him to see but thank God, The Way We Live Now 607

Donny reported, he'd had the sense to refuse, but he did agree to see Victor's visualization therapist, although what could one possibly visu- alize, said Hilda, when the point of visualizing disease was to see it as an entity with contours, borders, here rather than there, something limited, something you were the host of, in the sense that you could disinvite the disease, while this was so total; or would be, Max said. But the main thing, said Greg, was to see that he didn't go the macrobi- otic route, which might be harmless for plump Betsy but could only be devastating for him, lean as he'd always been, with all the cigarettes and other appetite-suppressing chemicals he'd been welcoming into his body for years; and now was hardly the time, as Stephen pointed out, to be worried about cleaning up his act, and eliminating the chemical additives and other pollutants that we're all blithely or not so blithely feasting on, blithely since we're healthy, healthy as we can be; so far, Ira said. Meat and potatoes is what I'd be happy to see him eating, Ursula said wistfully. And spaghetti and clam sauce, Greg added. And thick cholesterol-rich omelets with smoked mozzarella, suggested Yvonne, who had flown from London for the weekend to see him. Chocolate cake, said Frank. Maybe not chocolate cake, Ursula said, he's already eating so much chocolate.

And when, not right away but still only three weeks later, he was accepted into the protocol for the new drug, which took considerable behind-the-scenes lobbying with the doctors, he talked less about being ill, according to Donny, which seemed like a good sign, Kate felt, a sign that he was not feeling like a victim, feeling not that he had a disease but, rather, was living with a disease (that was the right cliche, wasn't it?), a more hospitable arrangement, said Jan, a kind of cohabitation which implied that it was something temporary, that it could be termi- nated, but terminated how, said Hilda, and when you say hospitable, Jan, I hear hospital. And it was encouraging, Stephen insisted, that from the start, at least from the time he was finally persuaded to make the telephone call to his doctor, he was willing to say the name of the disease, pronounce it often and easily, as if it were just another word, like boy or gallery or cigarette or money or deal, as in no big deal, Paolo interjected, because, as Stephen continued, to utter the name is a sign of health, a sign that one has accepted being who one is, mortal, vulner- able, not exempt, not an exception after all, it's a sign that one is willing, truly willing, to fight for one's life. And we must say the name, too, and often, Tanya added, we mustn't lag behind him in honesty, or let him 632 SUSAN SONTAG

feel that, the effort of honesty having been made, it's something done with and he can go on to other things. One is so much better prepared to help him, Wesley replied. In a way he's fortunate, said Yvonne, who had taken care of a problem at the New York store and was flying back to London this evening, sure, fortunate, said Wesley, no one is shunning him, Yvonne went on, no one's afraid to hug him or kiss him lightly on the mouth, in London we are, as usual, a few years behind you, people I know, people who would seem to be not even remotely at risk, are just terrified, but I'm impressed by how cool and rational you all are; you find us cool, asked Quentin. But I have to say, he's reported to have said, I'm terrified, I find it very hard to read (and you know how he loves to read, said Greg; yes, reading is his television, said Paolo) or to think, but I don't feel hysterical. I feel quite hysterical, Lewis said to Yvonne. But you're able to do something for him, that's wonderful, how I wish I could stay longer, Yvonne answered, it's rather beautiful, I can't help thinking, this Utopia of friendship you've assembled around him (this pathetic Utopia, said Kate), so that the disease, Yvonne concluded, is not, anymore, out there. Yes, don't you think we're more at home here, with him, with the disease, said Tanya, because the imagined disease is so much worse than the reality of him, whom we all love, each in our fashion, having it. I know for me his getting it has quite demystified the disease, said Jan, I don't feel afraid, spooked, as I did before he became ill, when it was only news about remote acquaintances, whom I never saw again after they became ill. But you know you're not going to come down with the disease, Quentin said, to which Ellen replied, on her behalf, that's not the point, and possibly untrue, my gynecologist says that everyone is at risk, everyone who has a sexual life, because sexuality is a chain that links each of us to many others, unknown others, and now the greatest chain of being has become a chain of death as well. It's not the same for you, Quentin insisted, it's not the same for you as it is for me or Lewis or Frank or Paolo or Max, I'm more and more fright- ened, and I have every reason to be. I don't think about whether I'm at risk or not, said Hilda, I know that I was afraid to know someone with the disease, afraid of what I'd see, what I'd feel, and after the first day I came to the hospital I felt so relieved. I'll never feel that way, that fear, again; he doesn't seem different from me. He's not, Quentin said.

According to Lewis, he talked more often about those who visited more often, which is natural, said Betsy, I think he's even keeping a tally. And among those who came or checked in by phone every day, the The Way We Live Now 609 inner circle as it were, those who were getting more points, there was still a further competition, which was what was getting on Betsy's nerves, she confessed to Jan; there's always that vulgar jockeying for position around the bedside of the gravely ill, and though we all feel suffused with virtue at our loyalty to him (speak for yourself, said Jan), to the extent that we're carving time out of every day, or almost every day, though some of us are dropping out, as Xavier pointed out, aren't we getting at least as much out of this as he is. Are we, said Jan. We're rivals for a sign from him of special pleasure over a visit, each stretching for the brass ring of his favor, wanting to feel the most wanted, the true nearest and dearest, which is inevitable with someone who doesn't have a spouse and children or an official in-house lover, hierarchies that no one would dare contest, Betsy went on, so we are the family he's founded, without meaning to, without official titles and ranks (we, we, snarled Quentin); and is it so clear, though some of us, Lewis and Quentin and Tanya and Paolo, among others, are ex-lovers and all of us more or less than friends, which one of us he prefers, Victor said (now it's us, raged Quentin), because sometimes I think he looks forward more to seeing Aileen, who has visited only three times, twice at the hospital and once since he's been home, than he does you or me; but, according to Tanya, after being very disappointed that Aileen hadn't come, now he was angry, while, according to Xavier, he was not really hurt but touchingly passive, accepting Aileen's absence as something he somehow deserved. But he's happy to have people around, said Lewis; he says when he doesn't have company he gets very sleepy, he sleeps (according to Quentin), and then perks up when someone arrives, it's important that he not feel ever alone. But, said Victor, there's one person he hasn't heard from, whom he'd probably like to hear from more than most of us; but she didn't just vanish, even right after she broke away from him, and he knows exactly where she lives now, said Kate, he told me he put in a call to her last Christmas Eve, and she said it's nice to hear from you and Merry Christmas, and he was shattered, according to Orson, and furious and disdainful, according to Ellen (what do you expect of her, said Wesley, she was burned out), but Kate wondered if maybe he hadn't phoned Nora in the middle of a sleepless night, what's the time difference, and Quentin said no, I don't think so, I think he wouldn't want her to know.

And when he was feeling even better and had regained the pounds he'd shed right away in the hospital, though the refrigerator started to fill up 634 SUSAN SONTAG with organic wheat germ and grapefruit and skimmed milk (he's wor- ried about his cholesterol count, Stephen lamented), and told Quentin he could manage by himself now, and did, he started asking everyone who visited how he looked, and everyone said he looked great, so much better than a few weeks ago, which didn't jibe with what anyone had told him at that time; but then it was getting harder and harder to know how he looked, to answer such a question honestly when among them- selves they wanted to be honest, both for honesty's sake and (as Donny thought) to prepare for the worst, because he'd been looking like this for so long, at least it seemed so long, that it was as if he'd always been like this, how did he look before, but it was only a few months, and those words, pale and wan looking and fragile, hadn't they always applied? And one Thursday Ellen, meeting Lewis at the door of the building, said, as they rode up together in the elevator, how is he really? But you see how he is, Lewis said tartly, he's fine, he's perfectly healthy, and Ellen understood that of course Lewis didn't think he was perfectly healthy but that he wasn't worse, and that was true, but wasn't it, well, almost heartless to talk like that. Seems inoffensive to me, Quentin said, but I know what you mean, I remember once talking to Frank, somebody, after all, who has volunteered to do five hours a week of office work at the Crisis Center (I know, said Ellen), and Frank was going on about this guy, diagnosed almost a year ago, and so much further along, who'd been complaining to Frank on the phone about the indifference of some doctor, and had gotten quite abusive about the doctor, and Frank was saying there was no reason to be so upset, the implication being that he, Frank, wouldn't behave so irrationally, and I said, barely able to control my scorn, but Frank, Frank, he has every reason to be upset, he's dying, and Frank said, said according to Quentin, oh, I don't like to think about it that way.

And it was while he was still home, recuperating, getting his weekly treatment, still not able to do much work, he complained, but, accord- ing to Quentin, up and about most of the time and turning up at the office several days a week, that bad news came about two remote acquaintances, one in Houston and one in Paris, news that was inter- cepted by Quentin on the ground that it could only depress him, but Stephen contended that it was wrong to lie to him, it was so important for him to live in the truth; that had been one of his first victories, that he was candid, that he was even willing to crack jokes about the disease, but Ellen said it wasn't good to give him this end-of-the-world feeling, The Way We Live Now 611

too many people were getting ill, it was becoming such a common destiny that maybe some of the will to fight for his life would be drained out of him if it seemed to be as natural as, well, death. Oh, Hilda said, who didn't know personally either the one in Houston or the one in Paris, but knew of the one in Paris, a pianist who specialized in twenti- eth-century Czech and Polish music, I have his records, he's such a valuable person, and, when Kate glared at her, continued defensively, I know every life is equally sacred, but that is a thought, another thought, I mean, all these valuable people who aren't going to have their normal four score as it is now, these people aren't going to be replaced, and it's such a loss to the culture. But this isn't going to go on forever, Wesley said, it can't, they're bound to come up with something (they, they, muttered Stephen), but did you ever think, Greg said, that if some people don't die, I mean even if they can keep them alive (they, they, muttered Kate), they continue to be carriers, and that means, if you have a conscience, that you can never make love, make love fully, as you'd been wont — wantonly, Ira said — to do. But it's better than dying, said Frank. And in all his talk about the future, when he allowed himself to be hopeful, according to Quentin, he never mentioned the prospect that even if he didn't die, if he were so fortunate as to be among the first generation of the disease's survivors, never mentioned, Kate confirmed, that whatever happened it was over, the way he had lived until now, but, according to Ira, he did think about it, the end of bravado, the end of folly, the end of trusting life, the end of taking life for granted, and of treating life as something that, samurai-like, he thought himself ready to throw away lightly, impudently; and Kate recalled, sighing, a brief exchange she'd insisted on having as long as two years ago, huddling on a banquette covered with steel-gray indus- trial carpet on an upper level of The Prophet and toking up for their next foray onto the dance floor: she'd said hesitantly, for it felt foolish asking a prince of debauchery to, well, take it easy, and she wasn't keen on playing big sister, a role, as Hilda confirmed, he inspired in many women, are you being careful, honey, you know what I mean. And he replied, Kate went on, no, I'm not, listen, I can't, I just can't, sex is too important to me, always has been (he started talking like that, accord- ing to Victor, after Nora left him), and if I get it, well, I get it. But he wouldn't talk like that now, would he, said Greg; he must feel awfully foolish now, said Betsy, like someone who went on smoking, saying I can't give up cigarettes, but when the bad X-ray is taken even the most besotted nicotine addict can stop on a dime. But sex isn't like cigarettes, 612 SUSAN SONTAG is it, said Frank, and, besides, what good does it do to remember that he was reckless, said Lewis angrily, the appalling thing is that you just have to be unlucky once, and wouldn't he feel even worse if he'd stopped three years ago and had come down with it anyway, since one of the most terrifying features of the disease is that you don't know when you contracted it, it could have been ten years ago, because surely this disease has existed for years and years, long before it was recognized; that is, named. Who knows how long (I think a lot about that, said Max) and who knows (I know what you're going to say, Stephen interrupted) how many are going to get it.

I'm feeling fine, he's reported to have said whenever someone asked him how he was, which was almost always the first question anyone asked. Or: I'm feeling better, how are you? But he said other things, too. I'm playing leapfrog with myself, he is reported to have said, according to Victor. And: There must be a way to get something positive out of this situation, he's reported to have said to Kate. How American of him, said Paolo. Well, said Betsy, you know the old American adage: When you've got a lemon, make lemonade. The one thing I'm sure I couldn't take, Jan said he said to her, is becoming disfigured, but Stephen hastened to point out the disease doesn't take that form very often anymore, its profile is mutating, and, in conversation with Ellen, wheeled up words like blood-brain barrier; I never thought there was a barrier there, said Jan. But he mustn't know about Max, Ellen said, that would really depress him, please don't tell him, he'll have to know, Quentin said grimly, and he'll be furious not to have been told. But there's time for that, when they take Max off the respirator, said Ellen; but isn't it incredible, Frank said, Max was fine, not feeling ill at all, and then to wake up with a fever of a hundred and five, unable to breathe, but that's the way it often starts, with absolutely no warning, Stephen said, the disease has so many forms. And when, after another week had gone by, he asked Quentin where Max was, he didn't question Quentin's account of a spree in the Bahamas, but then the number of people who visited regularly was thinning out, partly because the old feuds that had been put aside through the first hospitalization and the return home had resurfaced, and the flickering enmity between Lewis and Frank ex- ploded, even though Kate did her best to mediate between them, and also because he himself had done something to loosen the bonds of love that united the friends around him, by seeming to take them all for granted, as if it were perfectly normal for so many people to carve out so The Way We Live Now 613 much time and attention for him, visit him every few days, talk about him incessantly on the phone with each other; but, according to Paolo, it wasn't that he was less grateful, it was just something he was getting used to, the visits. It had become, with time, a more ordinary kind of situation, a kind of ongoing party, first at the hospital and now since he was home, barely on his feet again, it being clear, said Robert, that I'm on the B list; but Kate said, that's absurd, there's no list; and Victor said, but there is, only it's not he, it's Quentin who's drawing it up. He wants to see us, we're helping him, we have to do it the way he wants, he fell down yesterday on the way to the bathroom, he mustn't be told about Max (but he already knew, according to Donny), it's getting worse.

When I was home, he is reported to have said, I was afraid to sleep, as I was dropping off each night it felt like just that, as if I were falling down a black hole, to sleep felt like giving in to death, I slept every night with the light on; but here, in the hospital, I'm less afraid. And to Quentin he said, one morning, the fear rips through me, it tears me open; and, to Ira, it presses me together, squeezes me toward myself. Fear gives every- thing its hue, its high. I feel so, I don't know how to say it, exalted, he said to Quentin. Calamity is an amazing high, too. Sometimes I feel so well, so powerful, it's as if I could jump out of my skin. Am I going crazy, or what? Is it all this attention and coddling I'm getting from everybody, like a child's dream of being loved? Is it the drugs? I know it sounds crazy but sometimes I think this is a fantastic experience, he said shyly; but there was also the bad taste in the mouth, the pressure in the head and at the back of the neck, the red, bleeding gums, the painful, if pink-lobed, breathing, and his ivory pallor, color of white chocolate. Among those who wept when told over the phone that he was back in the hospital were Kate and Stephen (who'd been called by Quentin), and Ellen, Victor, Aileen, and Lewis (who were called by Kate), and Xavier and Ursula (who were called by Stephen). Among those who didn't weep were Hilda, who said that she'd just learned that her sev- enty-five-year-old aunt was dying of the disease, which she'd contracted from a transfusion given during her successful double bypass of five years ago, and Frank and Donny and Betsy, but this didn't mean, according to Tanya, that they weren't moved and appalled, and Quentin thought they might not be coming soon to the hospital but would send presents; the room, he was in a private room this time, was filling up with flowers, and plants, and books, and tapes. The high tide of barely suppressed acrimony of the last weeks at home subsided into the rou- 614 SUSAN SONTAG tines of hospital visiting, though more than a few resented Quentin's having charge of the visiting book (but it was Quentin who had the idea, Lewis pointed out); now, to insure a steady stream of visitors, preferably no more than two at a time (this, the rule in all hospitals, wasn't enforced here, at least on this floor; whether out of kindness or inefficiency, no one could decide), Quentin had to be called first, to get one's time slot, there was no more casual dropping by. And his mother could no longer be prevented from taking a plane and installing herself in a hotel near the hospital; but he seemed to mind her daily presence less than expected, Quentin said; said Ellen it's we who mind, do you suppose she'll stay long. It was easier to be generous with each other visiting him here in the hospital, as Donny pointed out, than at home, where one minded never being alone with him; coming here, in our twos and twos, there's no doubt about what our role is, how we should be, collective, funny, distracting, undemanding, light, it's important to be light, for in all this dread there is gaiety, too, as the poet said, said Kate. (His eyes, his glittering eyes, said Lewis.) His eyes looked dull, extinguished, Wesley said to Xavier, but Betsy said his face, not just his eyes, looked soulful, warm; whatever is there, said Kate, I've never been so aware of his eyes; and Stephen said, I'm afraid of what my eyes show, the way I watch him, with too much intensity, or a phony kind of casualness, said Victor. And, unlike at home, he was cleanshaven each morning, at whatever hour they visited him; his curly hair was always combed; but he complained that the nurses had changed since he was here the last time, and that he didn't like the change, he wanted every- one to be the same. The room was furnished now with some of his personal effects (odd word for one's things, said Ellen), and Tanya brought drawings and a letter from her nine-year-old dyslexic son, who was writing now, since she'd purchased a computer; and Donny brought champagne and some helium balloons, which were anchored to the foot of his bed; tell me about something that's going on, he said, waking up from a nap to find Donny and Kate at the side of his bed, beaming at him; tell me a story, he said wistfully, said Donny, who couldn't think of anything to say; you're the story, Kate said. And Xavier brought an eighteenth-century Guatemalan wooden statue of Saint Sebastian with upcast eyes and open mouth, and when Tanya said what's that, a tribute to Eros past, Xavier said where I come from Sebastian is venerated as a protector against pestilence. Pestilence sym- bolized by arrows? Symbolized by arrows. All people remember is the body of a beautiful youth bound to a tree, pierced by arrows (of which The Way We Live Now 615 he always seems oblivious, Tanya interjected), people forget that the story continues, Xavier continued, that when the Christian women came to bury the martyr they found him still alive and nursed him back to health. And he said, according to Stephen, I didn't know Saint Se- bastian didn't die. It's undeniable, isn't it, said Kate on the phone to Stephen, the fascination of the dying. It makes me ashamed. We're learning how to die, said Hilda, I'm not ready to learn, said Aileen; and Lewis, who was coming straight from the other hospital, the hospital where Max was still being kept in ICU, met Tanya getting out of the elevator on the tenth floor, and as they walked together down the shiny corridor past the open doors, averting their eyes from the other patients sunk in their beds, with tubes in their noses, irradiated by the bluish light from the television sets, the thing I can't bear to think about, Tanya said to Lewis, is someone dying with the TV on.

He has that strange, unnerving detachment now, said Ellen, that's what upsets me, even though it makes it easier to be with him. Sometimes he was querulous. I can't stand them coming in here taking my blood every morning, what are they doing with all that blood, he is reported to have said; but where was his anger, Jan wondered. Mostly he was lovely to be with, always saying how are you, how are you feeling. He's so sweet now, said Aileen. He's so nice, said Tanya. (Nice, nice, groaned Paolo.) At first he was very ill, but he was rallying, according to Stephen's best informa- tion, there was no fear of his not recovering this time, and the doctor spoke of his being discharged from the hospital in another ten days if all went well, and the mother was persuaded to fly back to Mississippi, and Quentin was readying the penthouse for his return. And he was still writing his diary, not showing it to anyone, though Tanya, first to arrive one late-winter morning, and finding him dozing, peeked, and was horrified, according to Greg, not by anything she read but by a progres- sive change in his handwriting: in the recent pages, it was becoming spidery, less legible, and some lines of script wandered and tilted about the page. I was thinking, Ursula said to Quentin, that the difference between a story and a painting or photograph is that in a story you can write, He's still alive. But in a painting or a photo you can't show "still." You can just show him being alive. He's still alive, Stephen said.

1997

Pam Houston

The Best Girlfriend You Never Had

FROM Other Voices

A PERFECT DAY in the city always starts like this: my friend Leo picks me up and we go to a breakfast place called Rick and Ann's where they make red flannel hash out of beets and bacon, and then we cross the Bay Bridge to the gardens of the Palace of the Fine Arts to sit in the wet grass and read poems out loud and talk about love. The fountains are thick with black swans imported from Siberia, and if it is a fine day and a weekend there will be wedding parties, almost entirely Asian. The grooms wear smart gray pinstripe suits and the women are in beaded gowns so beautiful they make your teeth hurt just to look at them. The roman towers of the palace facade rise above us, more yellow than orange in the strengthening midday light. Leo has told me how the towers were built for the 1915 Panama Pacific Exhibition out of plaster and papier-mache, and even though times were hard the city raised the money to keep them, to cast them in concrete so they would never go away. Leo is an architect, and his relationship to all the most beautiful buildings in this city is astonishing given his age, only five years older than 1.1 make my living as a photographer; since art school I've been doing magazine work and living from grant to grant. The house Leo built for himself is like a fairy tale, all towers and angles, and the last wild peacock in Berkeley lives on his street. I live in the Oakland hills in a tiny house on a street so windy you can't drive more than ten miles per hour. I rented it because the ad said this: "Small house in the trees with a garden and a fireplace. Dogs welcome, of course." I am dogless for the moment, but it's not my natural condition. 770 PAM HOUSTON

You never know when I might get overwhelmed by a desire to go to the pound. It's a warm blue Saturday in November, and there are five Asian weddings under way at the Palace of the Fine Arts. The wedding parties' outfits do not match but are complementary, as if they have been ordered especially, one for each arch of the golden facade. Leo reads me a poem about a salt marsh at dawn while I set up my old Leica. I always get the best stuff when nobody's paying me to shoot. Like the time I caught a bride waltzing with one of the caterers behind the hedgerow, his chef's cap bent to touch the top of her veil. Then I read Leo a poem about longing in Syracuse. This is how we have always spoken to each other, Leo and I, and it would be the most romantic thing this century except that Leo is in love with Guinevere. Guinevere is a Buddhist weaver who lives in a clapboard house on Belvedere Island. She makes cloth on a loom she brought back from Tibet. Although her tapestries and wall hangings have made her a small fortune, she refuses to use the air conditioner in her Audi, even when she's driving across the Sacramento Valley. Air conditioning, she says, is just one of the things she does not allow herself. That Guinevere seems not to know Leo is alive causes him no par- ticular disappointment, and that she forgets — each time she meets him — that she has met him several times before only adds to what he calls her charming basket of imperfections. The only Buddha I could love, he says, is one who is capable of forgetfulness and sin. Guinevere is in love with a man in New York City who told her in a letter that the only thing better than three thousand miles between him and the object of his desire would be if she had a terminal illness. "I could really get behind a relationship with a woman who had only six months to live" was what he wrote. She showed me the words as if to make sure they existed, though something in her tone made me think she was proud. The only person I know of who's in love with Leo (besides me, a little) is a gay man named Raphael who falls in love with one straight man after another and then buys each one a whole new collection of CDs. They come, Leo says, as if from the Columbia House Record Club, once a month like clockwork, in a plain cardboard wrapper, no return address and no name. They are by artists most people have never heard of, like the Nields and Boris Grebeshnikov; there are Andean folksongs and hip-hop and beat. Across the swan-bearing lake a wedding has just reached its comple- The Best Girlfriend You Never Had 77i tion. The groom is managing to look utterly solemn and completely delirious with joy at the same time. Leo and I watch the kiss, and I snap the shutter just as the kiss ends and the wedding party bursts into applause. "Sucker," Leo says. "Oh, right," I say. "Like you wouldn't trade your life for his right this minute." "I don't know anything about his life," Leo says. "You know he remembered to do all the things you forgot." "I think I prefer it," Leo says, "when you reserve that particular lecture for yourself." He points back across the lake, where the bride has just leaped into her maid of honor's arms, and I snap the shutter again. "Or for one of your commitment-phobic boyfriends," Leo adds. "I guess the truth is, I can't blame them," I say. "I mean, if I saw me coming down the street with all my stuff hanging out, I'm not so sure I'd pick myself up and go trailing after." "Of course you would," Leo says. "And it's because you would, and because the chance of that happening is so slim, and because you hold out hope anyway that it might... that's what makes you a great photog- rapher." "Greatness is nice," I tell him. "I want contact. I want someone's warm breath on my face." I say it as if it's a dare, which we both know it isn't. The flower girl across the lake is throwing handfuls of rose petals straight up in the air.

I came to this city near the ocean over a year ago because I recently spent a long time under the dark naked water of the Colorado River and I took it as a sign that the river wanted me away. I had taken so many pictures by then of the chaos of heaved-up rock and petrified sand and endless sky that I'd lost my balance and fallen into them. I couldn't keep separate anymore what was the land and what was me. There was a man there named Josh who didn't want nearly enough from me, and a woman called Thea who wanted way too much, and I was sandwiched between them, one of those weaker rock layers like limestone that disappears under pressure or turns into something shapeless like oil. I thought there might be an order to the city: straight lines, shiny surfaces, and right angles that would give myself back to me, take my work somewhere different, maybe to a safer place. Solitude was a straight line too, and I believed it was what I wanted, so I packed 772 PAM HOUSTON whatever I could get into my pickup, left behind everything I couldn't carry, including two pairs of skis, a whole darkroom full of photo equipment, and the mountains I'd sworn again and again I couldn't live without. I pointed myself west down the endless two lanes of Highway 50 — The Loneliest Road in America say the signs that rise out of the desert on either side of it — all the way across Utah and Nevada to this white shining city on the bay. I got drunk on the city at first, the way some people do on vodka, the way it lays itself out as if in a nest of madronas and eucalyptus, the way it sparkles brighter even than the sparkling water that surrounds it, the way the Golden Gate reaches out of it, like fingers, toward the wild wide ocean that lies beyond. I loved the smell of fresh blueberry muffins at the Oakland Grill down on Third and Franklin, the train whistle sounding right outside the front door, and tattooed men of all colors unloading crates of cauliflower, broccoli, and peas. Those first weeks I'd walk the streets for hours, shooting more film in a day than I could afford in a week, all those lives in such dangerous and unnatural proximity, all those stories my camera could tell. I'd walk even the nastiest part, the blood pumping through my veins as hard as when I first saw the Rocky Mountains so many years ago. One night in the Tenderloin I rounded a corner and met a guy in a wheel- chair head on, who aimed himself at me and covered me with urine. Baptized, I said to my horrified friends the next day, anointed with the nectar of the city gods. Right off the bat I met a man named Gordon, and we'd drive down to the Oakland docks in the evening and look out at the twenty-story hydraulic boat lifts, which I said looked like a battalion of Doberman pinschers protecting the harbor from anyone who might invade. Gor- don's real name was Salvador, and he came from poor people, straw- berry pickers in the Central Valley, two of his brothers stillborn from Malathion poisoning. He left the valley and moved to the city when he was too young by law to drive the truck he stole from his father's field boss. He left it double-parked in front of the Castro Theater, talked a family in the Mission into trading work for floor space, changed his name to Gordon, changed his age from fifteen to twenty, and applied for a grant to study South American literature at San Francisco State. He had his Ph.D. before he turned twenty, a tenure-track teaching job 77i The Best Girlfriend You Never Had at Berkeley by twenty-one. When he won his first teaching award, his mother was in the audience; when their eyes met, she nodded her approval, but when he looked for her afterward, she was nowhere to be found. "Can you believe it?" he said when he told the story, his voice such a mixture of pride and disappointment that I didn't know which was more unbelievable, that she had come or that she had gone.

"If one more woman I used to date turns into a lesbian," Leo says, "I'm moving to Minneapolis." The wedding receptions are well under way, and laughter bubbles toward us across the lagoon. "It's possible to take that as a compliment," I say, "if you want to bend your mind that way." "I don't," he says. "Maybe it's just a choice a woman makes," I say, "when she feels she has exhausted all her other options." "Oh yeah, like you start out being a person," Leo says, "and then you decide to become a car." "Sometimes I think it's either that or Alaska," I say. "The odds there, better than ten to one." I remember a bumper sticker I saw once in Haines, Alaska, near the place where the ferries depart for the lower forty-eight: Baby, it said, when you leave here you 11 be ugly again. "In Alaska," I say, "I've actually had men fall at my feet." "I bet a few men have fallen at your feet down here," he says, and I try to look him in the eye to see how he means it, but he keeps them fixed on the poetry book. He says, "Aren't I the best girlfriend you never had?" The last woman Leo called the love of his life only let him see her twice a week for three years. She was a cardiologist who lived in the Marina who said she spent all day with broken hearts and she had no intention of filling her time off with her own. At the start of the fourth year, Leo asked her to raise the number of dates to three times a week, and she immediately broke things off. Leo went up on the bridge after that. This was before they put the phones in, the ones that go straight to the counselors. It was a sunny day and the tide was going out, making whitecaps as far as he could see into the Pacific. After a while he came down, not because he felt better but because of the way the numbers fell out. There had been 250 so far that 774 PAM HOUSTON year. Had the number been 4 or 199 or even 274, he says he might have done it, but he wasn't willing to go down officially with a number as meaningless as 251. A woman sitting on the grass near us starts telling Leo how much he looks like her business partner, but there's an edge to her voice I can't identify, an insistence that means she's in love with the guy, or she's crazy, or she's just murdered him this morning and she has come to the Palace of the Fine Arts to await her impending arrest. "The great thing about Californians," Leo says when the woman has finally gotten up to leave, "is that they think it's perfectly okay to exhibit all their neuroses in public as long as they apologize for them first." Leo grew up like I did on the East Coast, eating Birdseye frozen vegetables and Swanson's deep-dish meat pies on TV trays next to our parents and their third martinis, watching What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth on television, and talking about anything on earth except what was wrong. "Is there anyone you could fall in love with besides Guinevere?" I ask Leo, after he's read a poem about tarantulas and digger wasps. "There's a pretty woman at work," he says. "She calls herself the Diva." "Leo," I say, "write this down. I think it's a good policy to avoid any woman who uses an article in her name." There are policemen at the palace grounds today handing out infor- mation about how we can protect ourselves from an epidemic of car- jackings that has been taking place in the city for the last five months. The crime begins, the flyer tells us, with the criminal bumping the victim's car from behind. When the victim gets out of the car to ex- change information, the criminal hits her — and it's generally a woman — over the head with a heavy object, leaves her on the sidewalk, steals her car, and drives away. The flyer says we are supposed to keep our windows rolled up when the other driver approaches, keep the doors locked, and say through the glass, "I'm afraid. I'm not getting out. Please follow me to the nearest convenience store." It says under no circumstances should we ever let the criminal drive us to crime scene number two. "You couldn't do it, could you?" Leo asks, and slaps my arm like a wise guy. "What do you think they mean," I say, "by crime scene number two?" "You're evading the question because you know the answer too well," The Best Girlfriend You Never Had 77i

he says. "You're the only person I know who'd get your throat slit sooner than admit you're afraid." "You know," I say to Leo, to change the subject, "you don't act much like a person who wants kids more than anything." "Yeah, and you don't act like a person who wants to be married with swans." "I'd do it," I say. "Right now. Step into that wedding dress, no ques- tions asked." "Lucy," Leo says, "seriously, do you have any idea how many steps there are between you and that wedding dress?" "No," I say. "Tell me." "Fifty-five," he says. "At least fifty-five."

Before Gordon I had always dated the strong silent types, I think, so I could invent anything I wanted to go on in their heads. Gordon and I talked about words and the kind of pictures you could make so that you didn't need them, and I thought what I always thought in the first ten minutes: that after years and years of wild pitches, I'd for once in my life thrown a strike. It took me less than half a baseball season to discover my oversight: Gordon had a jealous streak as vicious as a heat-seeking missile, and he could make a problem out of a paper bag. We were asked to leave two restaurants in one week alone, and it got to the point, fast, where if the waitperson wasn't female, I'd ask if we could go somewhere else or have another table. Car mechanics, piano tuners, dry cleaners, toll takers — in Gordon's mind they were all out to bed me, and I was out to make them want to. A honey pot, he'd called me once, and he said he and all other men in the Bay Area were a love-crazed swarm of bees. When I told Guinevere how I'd fallen for Gordon, she said, "You only get a few chances to feel your life all the way through. Before — you know — you become unwilling." I told her the things I was afraid to tell Leo: how the look on Gordon's face turned from passion to anger, how he yelled at me in a store so loud one time that the manager slipped me a note that said he would pray for me, how each night I would stand in the street while he revved up his engine and scream Please, Gordon, please, Gordon, don't drive away. "At one time in my life I had breast implants just to please a man," she said. "Now I won't even take off my bracelets before bed." 776 PAM HOUSTON

Guinevere keeps a bowl of cards on her breakfast table between the sugar and the coffee. They are called angel cards and she bought them at the New Age store. Each card has a word printed on it, sisterhood or creativity or romance, and there's a tiny angel with her body in a posi- tion that is supposed to illustrate the word. That morning I picked balance, with a little angel perched in the center of a teeter-totter, and when Guinevere reached in for her own word she sighed in disgust. Without looking at the word again, without showing it to me, she put the card in the trash can and reached to pick another. I went to the trash can and found it. The word was surrender, and the angel was looking upward, with her arms outstretched. "I hate that," she said, her mouth slightly twisted. "Last week I had to throw away submit." Guinevere brought me a cookie and a big box of Kleenex. She said that choices can't be good or bad. There is only the event and the lessons learned from it. She corrected my pronunciation gently and constantly: the Bu in Buddha, she said, is like the pu in pudding and not like the boo in ghost.

When I was twenty-five years old, I took home to my parents a boy named Jeffrey I thought I wanted to marry. He was everything I believed my father wanted. He had an MBA from Harvard. He had patches on the elbows of his sportcoats. He played golf on a course that only allowed men. We spent the weekend drinking the wine and eating the pate Jeffrey's mother had sent him from her fermette in the southwest of France. Jeffrey let my father show him decades' worth of tennis trophies. He played the piano while my mother sang her old torch songs. I waited until I had a minute alone with my father. "Papa," I said — it was what I always called him — "how do you like Jeffrey?" "Lucille," he said, "I haven't ever liked any of your boyfriends, and I don't expect I ever will. So why don't you save us both the embarrass- ment and not ask again?" After that I went back to dating mechanics and river guides. My mother kept Jeffrey's picture on the mantel till she died.

The first time I was mugged in the city, I'd been to the late show all alone at the Castro Theatre. It's one of those magnificent old movie- houses with a huge marquee that lights up the sky like a carnival, a The Best Girlfriend You Never Had 77i ceiling that looks like it belongs in a Spanish cathedral, heavy red velvet curtains laced with threads that sparkle gold, and a real live organist who disappears into the floor when the previews begin. I liked to linger there after the movie finished, watch the credits and the artificial stars in the ceiling. That Tuesday I was the last person to step out of the theater into a chilly and deserted night. I had one foot off the curb when the man approached me, a little too close for comfort even then. "Do you have any change you can spare?" he said. The truth was, I didn't. I had scraped the bottom of my purse to put together enough quarters, nickels, and dimes to get into the movie, and the guy behind the glass had let me in thirty-three cents short. I said I was sorry and headed for the parking lot. I knew he was behind me, but I didn't turn around. I should have gotten my keys out before I left the theater, I thought. Shouldn't have stayed to see every credit roll. About ten steps from my car I felt a firm jab in the middle of my rib cage. "I bet you'd feel differently," the man said, "if I had a gun in my hand." "I might feel differently," I said, whirling around with more force than I intended, "but I still wouldn't have any money." He flinched, changed the angle of his body, just slightly back and away. And when he did, when his eyes dropped from mine to his hand holding whatever it was in his jacket pocket, I was reminded of a time I almost walked into a female grizzly with a nearly grown cub. How we had stood there posturing, how she had glanced down at her cub just that way, giving me the opportunity to let her know she didn't need to kill me. We could both go on our way. "Look," I said. "I've had a really emotional day, okay?" As I talked, I dug into my purse and grabbed my set of keys, a kind of weapon in their own right. "And I think you ought to just let me get in the car and go home." While he considered this, I took the last steps to my car and got in. I didn't look in the rearview mirror until I was on the freeway.

By mid-afternoon Leo and I have seen one too many happy couples get married, and we drive over the Golden Gate to Tiburon to a restaurant called Guymos where we drink margaritas made with Patron tequila and eat ceviche appetizers and look out on Angel Island and the city — 778 PAM HOUSTON

whitest of all from this perspective, rising like a mirage out of the blue-green bay. We watch the ferry dock, unload the suburbanites, then load them up again for the twice-hourly trip to the city. We are jealous of their starched shirts and brown loafers, how their clothes seem a testament to the balance in their lives. The fog rolls over and down the lanyard side of Mount Tamalpais, and the city moves in and out of it, glistening like Galilee one moment, then gray and dreamy like a ghost of itself the next, and then gone, like a thought bubble, like somebody's good idea. "Last night," I say, "I was walking alone down Telegraph Avenue. I was in a mood, you know. Gordon and I had a fight about John Lennon." "Was he for or against?" Leo says. "Against," I say, "but it doesn't matter. Anyway, I was scowling, maybe crying a little, moving along pretty fast, and I step over this homeless guy with his crutches and his little can and he says, 'I don't even want any money from you, I'd just like you to smile.'" "So did you?" Leo says. "I did," I say. "I not only smiled, but I laughed too, and then I went back and gave him all the money in my wallet, which was only eighteen dollars, but still. I told him to be sure and use that line again." "I love you," Leo says, and takes both of my hands in his. "I mean, in the good way."

When I was four years old and with my parents in Palm Beach, Florida, I pulled a seven-hundred-pound cement urn off its pedestal and onto my legs, crushing both femurs. All the other urns on Worth Avenue had shrubs in them trimmed into the shapes of animals, and this one, from my three-foot point of view, appeared to be empty. When they asked me why I had tried to pull myself up and into the urn, I said I thought it had fish inside it and I wanted to see them, though whether I had imagined actual fish or just tiny shrubs carved into the shape of fish, I can't any longer say. The urn was empty, of course, and waiting to be repaired, which is why it toppled over onto me. My father rolled it off with some of that superhuman strength you always hear about and picked me up — I was screaming bloody murder — and held me until the ambulance came. The next six weeks were the best of my childhood. I was hospitalized 77i The Best Girlfriend You Never Had the entire time, surrounded by doctors who brought me presents, nurses who read me stories, candy stripers who came to my room and played games. My parents, when they came to visit, were always happy to see me and usually sober. I spent the remaining years of my childhood fantasizing about ill- nesses and accidents that I hoped would send me to the hospital again.

One day last month Gordon asked me to go backpacking at Point Reyes National Seashore, to prove to me, he said, that he could take an interest in my life. I hadn't slept outside one single night since I came to the city, he said, and I must miss the feel of hard ground underneath me, must miss the smell of my tent in the rain. Gordon borrowed a backpack, got the permit, freed the weekend, studied the maps. I was teaching a darkroom workshop in Corte Ma- dera on Saturday. Gordon would pick me up at four when the work- shop ended; we'd have just enough time to drive up the coast to Point Reyes Station and walk for an hour into the first camp. A long second day would take us to the beach, the point with the lighthouse, and back to the car with no time again to spare before dark. I had learned by then how to spot trouble coming, and that morning I waited in the car with Gordon while first one man, way too young for me, and then another, way too old, entered the warehouse where my workshop was going to be held. I got out of the car without seeing the surfer, tall and blond and a little breathtaking, portfolio under the arm that usually held the board. I kept my eyes away from his, but his handshake found me anyway. When he held the big door open, I went on through. I could hear the screech of tires behind me through what felt like a ton of metal. That Gordon was there when the workshop ended at 4:02 surprised me a little. Then I got in the Pathfinder and saw only one backpack. He drove up the coast to Point Reyes without speaking. Stinson, Bolinas, Dogtown, and Olema. The white herons in Tomales Bay had their heads tucked under their arms. He stopped at the trailhead, got out, threw my pack into the dune grass, opened my door, and tried with his eyes to pry me from my seat. "I guess this means you're not coming with me," I said, imagining how we could do it with one pack, tenacious in my hope that the day could be saved. 780 PAM HOUSTON

What you're thinking right now is why didn't I do it, get out of that car without making eye contact, swing my pack on my back, and head off down the trail? And when I tell you what I did do, which was to crawl all the way to the back of the Pathfinder, holding on to the cargo net as if a tornado were coming, and let go with one ear-splitting, head-pounding scream after another till Gordon got back in the car, till we got back down the coast, back on the 580, back over the bridge, and back to Gordon's apartment, till he told me if I was quiet, he'd let me stay, you would wonder how a person, even if she had done it, could ever in a million years admit to such a thing. Then I could tell you about the sixteen totaled cars in my first fifteen winters. The Christmas Eve my father and I rolled a Plymouth Fury from median to guardrail and back four full times with nine complete revolutions, how they had to cut us out with chainsaws, how my father, limber from the Seagram's, got away unhurt. I could tell you about the neighbor girl who stole me away one time at the sound of my parents shouting, how she refused to give me back to them even when the police came with a warrant, how her ten-year-old hand must have looked holding my three-year-old one, how in the end it became a funny story that both sets of parents loved to tell. I could duplicate for you the hollow sound an empty bottle makes when it hits Formica and the stove is left on and the pan's started smoking and there's a button that says off but no way to reach. I could tell you the lie I told myself with Gordon. That anybody is better than nobody. And you will know exactly why I stayed in the back of that Pathfinder, unless you are lucky, and then you will not.

"Did I ever tell you about the time I got mugged?" Leo asks me, and we both know he has but it's his favorite story. "I'd like it," I say, "if you'd tell it again." Before Leo built his house on the street with the peacocks, he lived in the city between North Beach and the piers. He got mugged one night, stepping out of his car fumbling for his house keys; the man had a gun and sneaked up from behind. What Leo had in his wallet was thirteen dollars, and when he offered the money he thought the man would kill him on the spot. "You got a cash card," the man said. "Let's find a machine." "Hey," I say when he gets to this part, "that means you went to crime scene number two." 77i The Best Girlfriend You Never Had

The part I hate most is how he took Leo's glasses. He said he would drive, but as it turned out he didn't know stick shifts, and the clutch burned and smoked all the way up Nob Hill. "My name's Bill," the man said, and Leo thought since they were getting so friendly, he'd offer to work the clutch and the gearshift to save what was left of his car. It wasn't until Leo got close to him, straddling the gearbox and balanced against Bill's shoulder, that he smelled the blood under Bill's jacket and knew that he'd been shot. They drove like that to the Marina Safeway, Bill's eyes on the road and his hands on the steering wheel, Leo working the clutch and the shifter according to feel. At the cash machine Leo looked for help but couldn't get anyone's eyes to meet his, with Bill and his gun pressed so close to his side. They all think we're a couple, he thought, and laughter bubbled up inside him. He told Bill a lie about a hundred-dollar ATM limit, pushed the buttons, handed over the money. They drove back to Leo's that same Siamese way, and when they got there Bill thanked Leo, shook his hand, asked one more favor before he took off. "I'm going to give you a phone number," Bill said. "My girlfriend in Sacramento. I want you to call her and tell her I made it all right." "Sure," Leo said, folding the paper. "I want you to swear to God." "Sure," Leo said, "I'll call her." Bill put the end of the gun around Leo's belly button. "Say it, mother- fucker, say, 'I swear to God.'" "I swear to God," Leo said, and Bill walked away. Back in his apartment, Leo turned on Letterman. When the shaking stopped, he called the police. "Not much we can do about it," the woman at the end of the line told him. "We could come dust your car for fingerprints, but it would make a hell of a mess." Two hours later Leo looked in a phone book and called a Catholic priest. "No," the priest said, "you don't have to call her. You swore to God under extreme circumstances, brought down upon you by a godless man." "I don't think that's the right answer," I had said when I first heard the story, and I say it again, on cue, today. The first time we had talked 782 PAM HOUSTON about the nature of godlessness, and how if a situation requires swear- ing to God, it is by definition extreme. But today I am thinking not of Bill or even of Leo's dilemma, but of the girlfriend in Sacramento, her lover shot, bleeding, and hijacking architects and still remembering to think of her. And I wonder what it was about her that made her stay with a man who ran from the law for a living, and if he made it home to her that night, if she stood near him in the kitchen dressing his wounds. I wonder how she saw herself, as what part of the story, and how much she had invested in how it would end. "I'm so deeply afraid," Gordon had said on the docks our first night together, "that I am nothing but weak and worthless. So I take the people close to me and try to break them, so they become as weak and worthless as me." I want to know the reason I could hear and didn't hear what he was saying, the reason that I thought the story could end differently for me. Things ended between Gordon and me in a bar in Jack London Square one night when we were watching the 49ers play the Broncos. It was Joe Montana's last year in San Francisco; rumors of the Kansas City acquisition had already begun. It was a close game late in the season; the Broncos had done what they were famous for in those days, jumped out to a twenty-point lead and then lost it incrementally as the quarters went by. The game came right down to the two-minute warning, Elway and Montana trading scoring drives so elegant it was as if they had shaken hands on it before the game. A minute twenty-seven left, ball on the Niners' twenty-two: Joe Montana had plenty of time and one last chance to shine. "Don't tell me you're a Bronco fan," a guy on the other side of me, a late arrival, said. "It's a tough job," I said, not taking my eyes off the TV set. For about the hundredth time that evening the camera was off the action and on a tearful, worried, or ecstatic Jennifer Montana, one lovely and protective hand around each of her two beautiful blond little girls. "Geez," I said, when the camera came back to the action several seconds too late, "you'd think Joe Montana was the only football player in America who had a wife." The guy next to me laughed a short choppy laugh. Joe took his team seventy-eight yards in seven plays for the win. 77i The Best Girlfriend You Never Had

On the way to his Pathfinder, Gordon said, "That's what I hate about you sports fans. You create a hero like Joe Montana just so you have somebody to knock down." "I don't have anything against Joe Montana," I said. "I think he throws the ball like an angel. I simply prefer watching him to watching his wife." "I saw who you preferred watching," Gordon said as we arrived at the car and he slammed inside. "Gordon," I said, "I don't even know what that man looked like." The moon was fat and full over the parts of Oakland no one dares to go to late at night, and I knew as I looked for a face in it that it didn't matter a bit what I said. Gordon liked to drive the meanest streets when he was feeling mean- est, and he was ranting about my shaking my tail feathers and keeping my pants zipped, and all I could think to do was remind him I was wearing a skirt. He squealed the brakes at the end of my driveway, and I got out and moved toward the dark entryway. "Aren't you going to invite me in?" he asked. And I thought about the months full of nights just like this one when I asked his forgiveness, when I begged him to stay. "I want you to make your own decision," I said over my shoulder, and he threw the car in second, gunned the engine, and screeched away. First came the messages taped to my door, the words cut out from ten different typefaces, held down with so many layers of tape they had the texture of decoupage. Then came the slit tires, the Karo Syrup in my gas tank, my box set of Dylan's Biography in a puddle at the foot of my drive. One day I opened an envelope from a magazine I'd shot for to find my paycheck ripped into a hundred pieces and then put back in the envelope, back in the box.

Leo and I trade margaritas for late-afternoon lattes, and still the fog won't lift all the way. "What I imagine," I say, "is coming home one night and Gordon emerging from between the sidewalk and the shadows, a Magnum .357 in his hand, and my last thought being, 'Well, you should have figured that this was the next logical thing.'" "I don't know why you need to be so tough about it," Leo says. "Can't you let the police or somebody know?" 784 PAM HOUSTON

I say, "This is not a good city to be dogless in." Leo puts his arm around me; I can tell by the way he does it he thinks he has to. "Do you wish sometimes," I say, "that you could just disappear like that city?" "I can," Leo says. "I do. What I wish more is that when I wanted to, I could stay." The ferry docks again in front of us, and we sit quietly until the whistles are finished and the boat has once again taken off. "Are you ever afraid," I say to Leo, "that there are so many things you need swirling around inside you that they will just overtake you, smother you, suffocate you till you die?" "I don't think so," Leo says. "I don't mean sex," I say, "or even love exactly — just all that want that won't let go of you, that even if you changed everything right now it's too late already to ever be full." Leo keeps his eyes fixed on the city, which is back out again, the Coit Tower reaching and leaning slightly like a stack of pepperoni pizza pies. "Until only a few years ago, I used to break into a stranger's house every six months like clockwork," he says. "Is that something like what you mean?" "Exactly," I say. A band of fog sweeps down, faster than the others, and takes away the city, even the site of Leo's mugging, even the apart- ment where Gordon now stays.

When I was eighteen years old, I met my parents in Phoenix, Arizona, to watch Penn State play USC in the Fiesta Bowl. I'd driven from Ohio, they'd flown from Pennsylvania, and the three of us — for the first time ever — shared my car. My father wanted me to drive them through the wealthy suburbs, places with names like Carefree and Cave Creek. He'd been drink- ing earlier in the day than usual, they both had, and he got it into his head that he wanted to see the world's highest fountain shoot three hundred gallons of water per minute into the parched and evaporative desert air. We were halfway through Cave Creek, almost to the fountain, when the cop pulled me over. "I'm sorry to bother you," he said, "but I've been tailing you for four or five minutes, and I have to tell you, I really don't know where to start." 77i The Best Girlfriend You Never Had

The cop's nameplate said Martin "Mad Dog" Jenkins. My father let out a sigh that hung in the car like a fog. "Well, first," Officer Jenkins said, "I clocked you going 43 in a 25. Then you rolled through not one but two stop signs without coming to a safe and complete stop, and you made a right-hand turn into the center lane." "Jesus Christ," my father said. "You've got one taillight out," Officer Jenkins said, "and either your turn signals are burned out too, or you are electing not to use them." "Are you hearing this?" my father said to the air. "May I see your license and registration?" "I left my license in Ohio," I said. The car was silent. "Give me a minute, then," Officer Jenkins said, "and I'll call it in." "What I don't know," my father said, "is how a person with so little sense of responsibility gets a driver's license in this country to begin with." He flicked the air vent open and closed, open and closed. "I mean, you gotta wonder if she should even be let out of the house in the morning." "Why don't you just say it, Robert," my mother said. "Say what you mean. Say Daughter, I hate you." Her voice started shaking. "Everybody sees it. Everybody knows it. Why don't you say it out loud?" "Ms. O'Rourke?" Officer Jenkins was back at the window. "Let's hear it," my mother went on. "Officer, I hate my daughter." The cop's eyes flicked for a moment into the back seat. "According to the information I received, Ms. O'Rourke," Officer Jenkins said, "you are required to wear corrective lenses." "That's right," I said. "And you are wearing contacts now?" There was something like hope in his voice. "No, sir." "She can't even lie?" my father asked. "About one little thing?" "Okay now, on three," my mother said. "Daughter, I wish you had never been born." "Ms. O'Rourke," Officer Jenkins said, "I'm just going to give you a warning today." My father bit off the end of a laugh. "Thank you very much," I said. "I hate to say this, Ms. O'Rourke," the cop said, "but there's nothing I could do to you that's going to feel like punishment." He held out his hand for me to shake. "You drive safely now," he said, and he was gone. 786 PAM HOUSTON

When the Fiesta Bowl was over, my parents and I drove back up to Carefree to attend a New Year's Eve party given by a gay man my mother knew who belonged to the wine club called the Royal Order of the Grape. My father wasn't happy about it, but he was silent. I just wanted to watch the ball come down on TV like I had every year of my childhood with the babysitter, but the men at the party were showing home movie after home movie of the club's indoctrination ceremony, while every so often two or three partygoers would get taken to the cellar to look at the bottles and taste. When my father tried to light a cigarette, he got whisked outside faster than I had ever seen him move. I was too young to be taken to the cellar, too old to be doted on, so after another half-hour of being ignored I went outside to join my father. The lights of Phoenix sparkled every color below us in the dark. "Lucille," he said, "when you get to be my age, don't ever spend New Year's Eve in a house where they won't let you smoke." "Okay," I said. "Your mother," he said, as he always did. "I know," I said, even though I didn't. "We just don't get love right, this family, but..." He paused, and the sky above Phoenix exploded into color, umbrellas of red and green and yellow. I'd never seen fireworks before, from the top. "Come in, come in, for the New Year's toast!" Our host was calling us from the door. I wanted more than anything for my father to finish his sentence, but he stabbed out his cigarette, got up, and walked inside. I've finished it for him a hundred times, but never to my satisfaction.

We pay the bill and Leo informs me that he has the temporary use of a twenty-seven-foot sailboat in Sausalito that belongs to a man he hardly knows. The fog has lifted enough for us to see the place where the sun should be, and it's brighter yet out by the Golden Gate, and we take the little boat out and aim for the brightness, the way a real couple might on a Saturday afternoon. It's a squirrelly boat, designed to make fast moves in a light wind, and Leo gives me the tiller two hundred yards before we pass under the dark shadow of the bridge. I am just getting the feel of it when Leo looks over his shoulder and says, "It appears we are in a race," and I look too, and there is a boat bearing down on us, twice our size, ten times, Leo tells me, our boat's value. 77i The Best Girlfriend You Never Had

"Maybe you should take it then," I say. "You're doing fine," he says. "Just set your mind on what's out there and run for it." At first all I can think about is Leo sitting up on top of the bridge running numbers in his head, and a story Gordon told me where two guys meet up there on the walkway and find out they are both survivors of a previous jump. Then I let my mind roll out past the cliffs and the breakers, past the Marin headlands and all the navigation buoys, out to some place where the swells swallow up the coastline and Hawaii is the only thing between me and forever, and what are the odds of hitting it if I just head for the horizon and never change my course? I can hear the big boat's bow breaking right behind us, and I set my mind even harder on a universe with nothing in it except deep blue water. "You scared him," Leo says. "He's coming about." The big boat turns away from us, back toward the harbor, just as the giant shadow of the bridge crosses our bow. Leo jumps up and gives me an America's Cup hug. Above us the great orange span of the thing is trembling, just slightly, in the wind. We sail on out to the edge of the headlands, where the swells get big enough to make us both a little sick and it's finally Leo who takes the tiller from my hand and turns the boat around. It's sunny as Ber- muda out here, and I'm still so high from the boat race that I can tell myself there's really nothing to be afraid of. Like sometimes when you go to a movie and you get so lost in the story that when you're walk- ing out of the theater you can't remember anything at all about your own life. You might forget, for example, that you live in a city where people have so many choices they throw words away, or so few they will bleed in your car for a hundred dollars. You might forget eleven or maybe twelve of the sixteen-in-a-row totaled cars. You might forget that you never expected to be alone at thirty-two or that a crazy man might be waiting for you with a gun when you get home tonight or that all the people you know — without exception — have their hearts all wrapped around someone who won't ever love them back. "I'm scared," I say to Leo, and this time his eyes come to meet mine. The fog is sitting in the center of the bay as if it's over a big pot of soup and we're about to enter it. 788 PAM HOUSTON

"I can't help you," Leo says, and squints his eyes against the mist in the air.

When I was two years old my father took me down to the beach in New Jersey, carried me into the surf until the waves were crashing onto his chest, and then threw me in like a dog, to see, I suppose, whether I would sink or float. My mother, who was from high in the Rocky Mountains, where all the water was too cold for swimming, and who had been told since birth never to get her face wet (she took only baths, never showers), got so hysterical by the water's edge that lifeguards from two different stands leapt to my rescue. There was no need, however. By the time they arrived at my father's side I had passed the flotation test, had swum as hard and fast as my untried limbs would carry me, and my father had me up on his shoul- ders, smiling and smug and a little surprised.

I make Leo drive back by the Palace of the Fine Arts on the way home, though the Richmond Bridge is faster. The fog has moved in there too, and the last of the brides are worrying their hairdos while the grooms help them into big dark cars that will whisk them away to the honey- moon suite at the Four Seasons, or to the airport to board planes bound for Tokyo or Rio. Leo stays in the car while I walk back to the pond. The sidewalk is littered with rose petals and that artificial rice that dissolves in the rain. Even the swans have paired off and are swimming that way, the feathers of their inside wings barely touching, their long necks bent slightly toward each other, the tips of their beaks almost closing the M. I take the swans' picture, and a picture of the rose petals bleeding onto the sidewalk. I step up under the tallest of the arches and bow to my imaginary husband. He takes my hand and we turn to the minister, who bows to us, and we bow again. "I'm scared," I say again, but this time it comes out stronger, almost like singing, as though it might be the first step — in fifty-five or a thousand — toward something like a real life, the very first step toward something that will last. Biographical Notes

The author of more than one hundred short stories and ten novels, Alice Adams (1926- ) lives and writes in San Francisco. Her most recent novels are Medicine Men, A Southern Exposure, and Caroline's Daughters. She has received numerous awards, including the O. Henry Special Award for Continu- ing Achievement. Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) began his writing career in 1913 after serv- ing in the Spanish-American War, working as a copywriter, and managing a paint plant. He initially received critical notice for Winesburg, Ohio, the first of several collections of stories. His other works include poetry, criticism, essays, and novels, including Dark Laughter; Tar, A Midwest Childhood; and A Story- Teller's Story. Known for his irreverent, innovative fiction, Donald Barthelme (1931-1989) wrote a dozen books, including the novels Sadness, Snow White, and The Dead Father. His story collections include Come Back, Dr. Caligari; Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts; City Life; Amateurs; and Great Days. He won the National Book Award in 1972 for The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, a book for children, and was nominated for the National Book Award in 1974 for Guilty Pleasures. One of the most distinctive voices of her generation, Ann Beattie (1947-) is the author of several novels, including Chilly Scenes of Winter, Falling in Place, Love Always, Picturing Will, and Another You. Her story collections include The Burning House, Distortions, Where You'll Find Me and Other Stories, What Was Mine, Secrets and Surprises, and, most recently, Convergences: New and Selected Stories. Saul Bellow (1915-) was born in Canada and grew up in Chicago. His works include The Dangling Man, Henderson the Rain King, Seize the Day, and Mosby's Memoirs and Other Stories. The recipient of many literary awards, he won the National Book Award in 1954 for The Adventures of Augie March, in 1965 for 1989

Lorrie Moore

You're Ugly, Too

FROM The New Yorker

YOU HAD TO GET OUT of them occasionally, those Illinois towns with the funny names: Paris, Oblong, Normal. Once, when the Dow Jones dipped two hundred points, a local paper boasted the banner headline "NORMAL MAN MARRIES OBLONG WOMAN." They knew what was important. They did! But you had to get out once in a while, even if it was just across the border to Terre Haute for a movie. Outside of Paris, in the middle of a large field, was a scatter of brick buildings, a small liberal-arts college by the improbable name of Hilldale-Versailles. Zoe Hendricks had been teaching American history there for three years. She taught "The Revolution and Beyond" to fresh- men and sophomores, and every third semester she had the senior seminar for majors, and although her student evaluations had been slipping in the last year and a half — Professor Hendricks is often late for class and usually arrives with a cup of hot chocolate, which she offers the class sips of— generally the department of nine men was pleased to have her. They felt she added some needed feminine touch to the corri- dors — that faint trace of Obsession and sweat, the light, fast clicking of heels. Plus they had had a sex-discrimination suit, and the dean had said, well, it was time. The situation was not easy for her, they knew. Once, at the start of last semester, she had skipped into her lecture hall singing "Getting to Know You" — all of it. At the request of the dean, the chairman had called her into his office, but did not ask her for an explanation, not really. He asked her how she was and then smiled in an avuncular way. She said, "Fine," and he studied the way she said it, her front teeth catching on the inside of her lower Up. She was almost pretty, but her face showed the strain and ambition of always having been close but not quite. There You're Ugly, Too 653 was too much effort with the eyeliner, and her earrings, worn, no doubt, for the drama her features lacked, were a little frightening, jutting out the sides of her head like antennae. "I'm going out of my mind," said Zoe to her younger sister, Evan, in Manhattan. Professor Hendricks seems to know the entire soundtrack to "The King and I." Is this history? Zoe phoned her every Tuesday. "You always say that," said Evan, "but then you go on your trips and vacations and then you settle back into things and then you're quiet for a while and then you say you're fine, you're busy, and then after a while you say you're going crazy again, and you start all over." Evan was a part-time food designer for photo shoots. She cooked vegetables in green dye. She propped up beef stew with a bed of marbles and shopped for new kinds of silicone sprays and plastic ice cubes. She thought her life was O.K. She was living with her boyfriend of many years, who was independently wealthy and had an amusing little job in book publish- ing. They were five years out of college, and they lived in a luxury midtown high rise with a balcony and access to a pool. "It's not the same as having your own pool," Evan was always sighing, as if to let Zoe know that, as with Zoe, there were still things she, Evan, had to do with- out. "Illinois. It makes me sarcastic to be here," said Zoe on the phone. She used to insist it was irony, something gently layered and sophisti- cated, something alien to the Midwest, but her students kept calling it sarcasm, something they felt qualified to recognize, and now she had to agree. It wasn't irony. "What is your perfume?" a student once asked her. "Room freshener," she said. She smiled, but he looked at her, un- nerved. Her students were by and large good midwesterners, spacey with estrogen from large quantities of meat and eggs. They shared their parents' suburban values; their parents had given them things, things, things. They were complacent. They had been purchased. They were armed with a healthy vagueness about anything historical or geo- graphic. They seemed actually to know very little about anything, but they were good-natured about it. "All those states in the East are so tiny and jagged and bunched up," complained one of her undergraduates the week she was lecturing on "The Turning Point of Independence: The Battle at Saratoga." "Professor Hendricks, you're from Delaware originally, right?" the student asked her. "Maryland," corrected Zoe. "Aw," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "New England." 654 LORRIE MOORE

Her articles — chapters toward a book called Hearing the One About: Uses of Humor in the American Presidency — were generally well re- ceived, though they came slowly for her. She liked her pieces to have something from every time of day in them — she didn't trust things written in the morning only — so she reread and rewrote painstakingly. No part of a day — its moods, its light — was allowed to dominate. She hung on to a piece for a year sometimes, revising at all hours, until the entirety of a day had registered there. The job she'd had before the one at Hilldale-Versailles had been at a small college in New Geneva, Minnesota, Land of the Dying Shopping Mall. Everyone was so blond there that brunettes were often presumed to be from foreign countries. Just because Professor Hendricks is from Spain doesn't give her the right to be so negative about our country There was a general emphasis on cheerfulness. In New Geneva you weren't supposed to be critical or complain. You weren't supposed to notice that the town had overextended and that its shopping malls were raggedy and going under. You were never to say you weren't "fine, thank you — and yourself?" You were supposed to be Heidi. You were supposed to lug goat milk up the hills and not think twice. Heidi did not complain. Heidi did not do things like stand in front of the new IBM photocopier saying, "If this fucking Xerox machine breaks on me one more time, I'm going to slit my wrists." But now in her second job, in her fourth year of teaching in the Midwest, Zoe was discovering something she never suspected she had: a crusty edge, brittle and pointed. Once she had pampered her students, singing them songs, letting them call her at home even, and ask per- sonal questions, but now she was losing sympathy. They were begin- ning to seem different. They were beginning to seem demanding and spoiled. "You act," said one of her senior-seminar students at a scheduled con- ference, "like your opinion is worth more than everyone else's in the class." Zoe's eyes widened. "I am the teacher," she said. "I do get paid to act like that." She narrowed her gaze at the student, who was wearing a big leather bow in her hair like a cowgirl in a TV ranch show. "I mean, otherwise everybody in the class would have little offices and office hours." Sometimes Professor Hendricks will take up the class's time just talking about movies she's seen. She stared at the student some more, then added, "I bet you'd like that." You're Ugly, Too 655

"Maybe I sound whiny to you," said the girl, "but I simply want my history major to mean something." "Well, there's your problem," said Zoe, and, with a smile, she showed the student to the door. "I like your bow," she said. Zoe lived for the mail, for the postman — that handsome blue jay — and when she got a real letter with a real full-price stamp from some- place else, she took it to bed with her and read it over and over. She also watched television until all hours and had her set in the bedroom — a bad sign. Professor Hendricks has said critical things about Fawn Hall, the Catholic religion, and the whole state of Illinois. It is unbelievable. At Christmastime she gave twenty-dollar tips to the mailman and to Jerry, the only cabbie in town, whom she had gotten to know from all her rides to and from the Terre Haute airport, and who, since he realized such rides were an extravagance, often gave her cut rates. "I'm flying in to visit you this weekend," announced Zoe. "I was hoping you would," said Evan. "Charlie and I are having a party for Halloween. It'll be fun." "I have a costume already. It's a bonehead. It's this thing that looks like a giant bone going through your head." "Great," said Evan. "It is, it's great." "All I have is my moon mask from last year and the year before. I'll probably end up getting married in it." "Are you and Charlie getting married?" Zoe felt slightly alarmed. "Hmmmmmmnnno, not immediately." "Don't get married." "Why?" "Just not yet. You're too young." "You're only saying that because you're five years older than I am and you're not married." "I'm not married? Oh, my God," said Zoe, "I forgot to get married." Zoe had been out with three men since she'd come to Hilldale- Versailles. One of them was a man in the municipal bureaucracy who had fixed a parking ticket she'd brought in to protest and then asked her out for coffee. At first, she thought he was amazing — at last, someone who did not want Heidi! But soon she came to realize that all men, deep down, wanted Heidi. Heidi with cleavage. Heidi with outfits. The park- ing-ticket bureaucrat soon became tired and intermittent. One cool fall day, in his snazzy, impractical convertible, when she asked him what was 656 LORRIE MOORE

wrong he said, "You would not be ill served by new clothes, you know." She wore a lot of gray-green corduroy. She had been under the impres- sion that it brought out her eyes, those shy stars. She flicked an ant from her sleeve. "Did you have to brush that off in the car?" he said, driving. He glanced down at his own pectorals, giving first the left, then the right, a quick survey. He was wearing a tight shirt. "Excuse me?" He slowed down at an amber light and frowned. "Couldn't you have picked it up and thrown it outside?" "The ant? It might have bitten me. I mean, what difference does it make?" "It might have bitten you! Ha! How ridiculous! Now it's going to lay eggs in my car!" The second guy was sweeter, lunkier, though not insensitive to certain paintings and songs, but too often, too, things he'd do or say would startle her. Once, in a restaurant, he stole the garnishes off her dinner plate and waited for her to notice. When she didn't, he finally thrust his fist across the table and said, "Look," and when he opened it, there was her parsley sprig and her orange slice crumpled to a wad. Another time, he described to her his recent trip to the Louvre. "And there I was in front of Delacroix's The Barque of Dante, and everyone else had wan- dered off, so I had my own private audience with it, all those agonized shades splayed in every direction, and there's this motion in that paint- ing that starts at the bottom, swirling and building up into the red fabric of Dante's hood, swirling out into the distance, where you see these orange flames — " He was breathless in the telling. She found this touching, and smiled in encouragement. "A painting like that," he said, shaking his head. "It just makes you shit." "I have to ask you something," said Evan. "I know every woman complains about not meeting men, but really, on my shoots I meet a lot of men. And they're not all gay, either." She paused. "Not anymore." "What are you asking?" The third guy was a political-science professor named Murray Peter- son, who liked to go out on double dates with colleagues whose wives he was attracted to. Usually, the wives would consent to flirt with him. Under the table sometimes there was footsie, and once there was even kneesie. Zoe and the husband would be left to their food, staring into their water glasses, chewing like goats. "Oh, Murray," said one wife, who had never finished her master's in physical therapy and wore great You're Ugly, Too 657

clothes. "You know, I know everything about you: your birthday, your license-plate number. I have everything memorized. But then that's the kind of mind I have. Once, at a dinner party, I amazed the host by getting up and saying goodbye to every single person there, first and last names." "I knew a dog who could do that," said Zoe with her mouth full. Murray and the wife looked at her with vexed and rebuking expressions, but the husband seemed suddenly twinkling and amused. Zoe swal- lowed. "It was a talking Lab, and after about ten minutes of listening to the dinner conversation this dog knew everyone's name. You could say, 'Take this knife to Murray Peterson,' and it would." "Really," said the wife, frowning, and Murray Peterson never called again. "Are you seeing anyone?" said Evan. "I'm asking for a particular reason. I'm not just being like Mom." "I'm seeing my house. I'm tending to it when it wets, when it cries, when it throws up." Zoe had bought a mint-green ranch house near campus, though now she was thinking that maybe she shouldn't have. It was hard to live in a house. She kept wandering in and out of the rooms, wondering where she had put things. She went downstairs into the basement for no reason at all except that it amused her to own a base- ment. It also amused her to own a tree. Her parents, in Maryland, had been very pleased that one of their children had at last been able to afford real estate, and when she closed on the house they sent her flowers with a congratulations card. Her mother had even UPS'd a box of old decorating magazines saved over the years — photographs of beautiful rooms her mother used to moon over, since there never had been any money to redecorate. It was like getting her mother's pornography, that box, inheriting her drooled- upon fantasies, the endless wish and tease that had been her life. But to her mother it was a rite of passage that pleased her. "Maybe you will get some ideas from these," she had written. And when Zoe looked at the photographs, at the bold and beautiful living rooms, she was filled with longing. Ideas and ideas of longing. Right now Zoe's house was rather empty. The previous owner had wallpapered around the furniture, leaving strange gaps and silhouettes on the walls, and Zoe hadn't done much about that yet. She had bought furniture, then taken it back, furnishing and unfurnishing, preparing and shedding, like a womb. She had bought several plain pine chests to use as love seats or boot boxes, but they came to look to her more and 658 LORRIE MOORE

more like children's coffins, so she returned them. And she had recently bought an Oriental rug for the living room, with Chinese symbols on it she didn't understand. The salesgirl had kept saying she was sure they meant "Peace" and "Eternal Life," but when Zoe got the rug home she worried. What if they didn't mean "Peace" and "Eternal Life"? What if they meant, say, "Bruce Springsteen"? And the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced she had a rug that said "Bruce Springsteen," and so she returned that, too. She had also bought a little baroque mirror for the front entryway, which, she had been told by Murray Peterson, would keep away evil spirits. The mirror, however, tended to frighten her, startling her with an image of a woman she never recognized. Sometimes she looked puffier and plainer than she remembered. Sometimes shifty and dark. Most times she just looked vague. "You look like someone I know," she had been told twice in the last year by strangers in restaurants in Terre Haute. In fact, sometimes she seemed not to have a look of her own, or any look whatsoever, and it began to amuse her that her students and colleagues were able to recognize her at all. How did they know? When she walked into a room, how did she look so that they knew it was she? Like this? Did she look like this? And so she returned the mirror. "The reason I'm asking is that I know a man I think you should meet," said Evan. "He's fun. He's straight. He's single. That's all I'm go- ing to say." "I think I'm too old for fun," said Zoe. She had a dark bristly hair in her chin, and she could feel it now with her finger. Perhaps when you had been without the opposite sex for too long, you began to resemble them. In an act of desperate invention, you began to grow your own. "I just want to come, wear my bonehead, visit with Charlie's tropical fish, ask you about your food shoots." She thought about all the papers on "Our Constitution: How It Affects Us" she was going to have to correct. She thought about how she was going in for ultrasound tests on Friday, because, according to her doctor and her doctor's assistant, she had a large, mysterious growth in her abdomen. Gallbladder, they kept saying. Or ovaries or colon. "You guys practice medicine?" asked Zoe, aloud, after they had left the room. Once, as a girl, she brought her dog to a vet, who had told her, "Well, either your dog has worms or cancer or else it was hit by a car." You're Ugly, Too 659

She was looking forward to New York. "Well, whatever. We'll just play it cool. I can't wait to see you, hon. Don't forget your bonehead," said Evan. "A bonehead you don't forget," said Zoe. "I suppose," said Evan. The ultrasound Zoe was keeping a secret, even from Evan. "I feel like I'm dying," Zoe had hinted just once on the phone. "You're not dying," said Evan, "you're just annoyed."

"Ultrasound," Zoe now said jokingly to the technician who put the cold jelly on her bare stomach. "Does that sound like a really great stereo system or what?" She had not had anyone make this much fuss over her bare stomach since her boyfriend in graduate school, who had hovered over her whenever she felt ill, waved his arms, pressed his hands upon her navel, and drawled evangelically, "Heal! Heal for thy Baby Jesus' sake!" Zoe would laugh and they would make love, both secretly hoping she would get pregnant. Later they would worry together, and he would sink a cheek to her belly and ask whether she was late, was she late, was she sure, she might be late, and when after two years she had not gotten pregnant they took to quarreling and drifted apart. "O.K.," said the technician absently. The monitor was in place, and Zoe's insides came on the screen in all their gray and ribbony hollowness. They were marbled in the finest gradations of black and white, like stone in an old church or a picture of the moon. "Do you suppose," she babbled at the technician, "that the rise in infertility among so many couples in this country is due to completely different species trying to reproduce?" The technician moved the scanner around and took more pictures. On one view in particular, on Zoe's right side, the technician became suddenly alert, the machine he was operating clicking away. Zoe stared at the screen. "That must be the growth you found there," suggested Zoe. "I can't tell you anything," said the technician rigidly. "Your doctor will get the radiologist's report this afternoon and will phone you then." "I'll be out of town," said Zoe. "I'm sorry," said the technician. Driving home, Zoe looked in the rearview mirror and decided she looked — well, how would one describe it? A little wan. She thought of 66 LORRIE MOORE the joke about the guy who visits his doctor and the doctor says, "Well, I'm sorry to say, you've got six weeks to live." "I want a second opinion," says the guy. You act like your opinion is worth more than everyone else's in the class. "You want a second opinion? O.K.," says the doctor. "You're ugly, too." She liked that joke. She thought it was terribly, terribly funny. She took a cab to the airport. Jerry the cabbie was happy to see her. "Have fun in New York," he said, getting her bag out of the trunk. He liked her, or at least he always acted as if he did. She called him Jare. "Thanks, Jare." "You know, I'll tell you a secret: I've never been to New York. I'll tell you two secrets: I've never been on a plane." And he waved at her sadly as she pushed her way in through the terminal door. "Or an escalator!" he shouted. The trick to flying safely, Zoe always said, was to never buy a discount ticket and to tell yourself you had nothing to live for anyway, so that when the plane crashed it was no big deal. Then, when it didn't crash, when you succeeded in keeping it aloft with your own worthlessness, all you had to do was stagger off, locate your luggage, and, by the time a cab arrived, come up with a persuasive reason to go on living.

"You're here!" shrieked Evan over the doorbell, before she even opened the door. Then she opened it wide. Zoe set her bags on the hall floor and hugged Evan hard. When she was little, Evan had always been affection- ate and devoted. Zoe had always taken care of her — advising, reassur- ing— until recently, when it seemed Evan had started advising and reassuring her. It startled Zoe. She suspected it had something to do with her being alone. It made people uncomfortable. "How are you?" "I threw up on the plane. Besides that, I'm O.K." "Can I get you something? Here, let me take your suitcase. Sick on the plane. Eeeyew." "It was into one of those sickness bags," said Zoe, just in case Evan thought she'd lost it in the aisle. "I was very quiet." The apartment was spacious and bright, with a view all the way downtown along the East Side. There was a balcony, and sliding glass doors. "I keep forgetting how nice this apartment is. Twenty-first floor, doorman . . ." Zoe could work her whole life and never have an apart- ment like this. So could Evan. It was Charlie's apartment. He and Evan lived in it like two kids in a dorm, beer cans and clothes strewn around. You're Ugly, Too 661

Evan put Zoe's bag away from the mess, over by the fish tanks. "I'm so glad you're here," she said. "Now what can I get you?" Evan made them lunch — soup from a can and saltines. "I don't know about Charlie," she said after they had finished. "I feel like we've gone all sexless and middle-aged already." "Hmmm," said Zoe. She leaned back into Evan's sofa and stared out the window at the dark tops of the buildings. It seemed a little unnatu- ral to live up in the sky like this, like birds that out of some wrong- headed derring-do had nested too high. She nodded toward the lighted fish tanks and giggled. "I feel like a bird," she said, "with my own per- sonal supply of fish." Evan sighed. "He comes home and just sacks out on the sofa, watch- ing fuzzy football. He's wearing the psychic cold cream and curlers, if you know what I mean." Zoe sat up, readjusted the sofa cushions. "What's fuzzy football?" "We haven't gotten cable yet. Everything comes in fuzzy. Charlie just watches it that way." "Hmm, yeah, that's a little depressing," Zoe said. She looked at her hands. "Especially the part about not having cable." "This is how he gets into bed at night." Evan stood up to demon- strate. "He whips all his clothes off, and when he gets to his underwear he lets it drop to one ankle. Then he kicks up his leg and flips the underwear in the air and catches it. I, of course, watch from the bed. There's nothing else. There's just that." "Maybe you should just get it over with and get married." "Really?" "Yeah. I mean, you guys probably think living together like this is the best of both worlds, but —" Zoe tried to sound like an older sister; an older sister was supposed to be the parent you could never have, the hip, cool mom. "But I've always found that as soon as you think you've got the best of both worlds" — she thought now of herself, alone in her house, of the toad-faced cicadas that flew around like little men at night and landed on her screens, staring; of the size-fourteen shoes she placed at the doorstep, to scare off intruders; of the ridiculous, inflat- able blowup doll someone had told her to keep propped up at the breakfast table — "it can suddenly twist and become the worst of both worlds." "Really?" Evan was beaming. "Oh, Zoe. I have something to tell you. Charlie and I are getting married." "Really." Zoe felt confused. 662 LORRIE MOORE

"I didn't know how to tell you." "Yeah, I guess the part about fuzzy football misled me a little." "I was hoping you'd be my maid of honor," said Evan, waiting. "Aren't you happy for me?" "Yes," said Zoe, and she began to tell Evan a story about an award- winning violinist at Hilldale-Versailles — how the violinist had come home from a competition in Europe and taken up with a local man who made her go to all his summer Softball games, made her cheer for him from the stands, with the wives, until she later killed herself. But when Zoe got halfway through, to the part about cheering at the Softball games, she stopped. "What?" said Evan. "So what happened?" "Actually, nothing," said Zoe lightly. "She just really got into Softball. You should have seen her." Zoe decided to go to a late afternoon movie, leaving Evan to chores she needed to do before the party — "I have to do them alone, really," she'd said, a little tense after the violinist story. Zoe thought about go- ing to an art museum, but women alone in art museums had to look good. They always did. Chic and serious, moving languidly, with a great handbag. Instead, she walked down through Kips Bay, past an earring boutique called Stick It in Your Ear, past a hair salon called Dorian Gray. That was the funny thing about "beauty," thought Zoe. Look it up in the yellow pages and you found a hundred entries, hostile with wit, cutesy with warning. But look up "truth" — Ha! There was nothing at all. Zoe thought about Evan getting married. Would Evan turn into Peter Pumpkin Eater's wife? Mrs. Eater? At the wedding, would she make Zoe wear some flouncy lavender dress, identical with the other maids'? Zoe hated uniforms, had even in the first grade refused to join Elf Girls because she didn't want to wear the same dress as everyone else. Now she might have to. But maybe she could distinguish it. Hitch it up on one side with a clothespin. Wear surgical gauze at the waist. Clip to her bodice one of those pins that say in loud letters "Shit Happens." At the movie — Death by Number— she bought strands of red lico- rice to tug and chew. She took a seat off to one side in the theater. She felt strangely self-conscious sitting alone, and hoped for the place to darken fast. When it did, and the coming attractions came on, she reached inside her purse for her glasses. They were in a Baggie. Her Kleenex was also in a Baggie. So were her pen and her aspirin and her You're Ugly, Too 663

mints. Everything was in Baggies. This was what she'd become: a woman alone at the movies with everything in a Baggie.

At the Halloween party, there were about two dozen people. There were people with ape heads and large hairy hands. There was someone dressed as a leprechaun. There was someone dressed as a frozen dinner. Some man had brought his two small daughters: a ballerina and a ballerina's sister, also dressed as a ballerina. There was a gaggle of sexy witches — women dressed entirely in black, beautifully made up and jeweled. "I hate those sexy witches. It's not in the spirit of Halloween," said Evan. Evan had abandoned the moon mask and dolled herself up as hausfrau, in curlers and an apron, a decision she now regretted. Charlie, because he liked fish, because he owned fish and collected fish, had decided to go as a fish. He had fins, and eyes on the sides of his head. "Zoe! How are you! I'm sorry I wasn't here when you first arrived!" He spent the rest of his time chatting up the sexy witches. "Isn't there something I can help you with here?" Zoe asked her sister. "You've been running yourself ragged." She rubbed her sister's arm, gently, as if she wished they were alone. "Oh, God, not at all," said Evan, arranging stuffed mushrooms on a plate. The timer went off, and she pulled another sheetful out of the oven. "Actually, you know what you can do?" "What?" Zoe put on her bonehead. "Meet Earl. He's the guy I had in mind for you. When he gets here, just talk to him a little. He's nice. He's fun. He's going through a di- vorce." "I'll try," Zoe groaned. "O.K.? I'll try." She looked at her watch. When Earl arrived, he was dressed as a naked woman, steel wool glued strategically to a body stocking, and large rubber breasts protrud- ing like hams. "Zoe, this is Earl," said Evan. "Good to meet you," said Earl, circling Evan to shake Zoe's hand. He stared at the top of Zoe's head. "Great bone." Zoe nodded. "Great tits," she said. She looked past him, out the window at the city thrown glittering up against the sky; people were saying the usual things: how it looked like jewels, like bracelets and necklaces unstrung. You could see the clock of the Con Ed building, the orange-and-gold-capped Empire State, the Chrysler like a rocket ship dreamed up in a depression. Far west you could glimpse Astor Plaza, 664 LORRIE MOORE with its flying white roof like a nun's habit. "There's beer out on the balcony, Earl. Can I get you one?" Zoe asked. "Sure, uh, I'll come along. Hey, Charlie, how's it going?" Charlie grinned and whistled. People turned to look. "Hey, Earl," someone called from across the room. "Va-va-va-voom." They squeezed their way past the other guests, past the apes and the sexy witches. The suction of the sliding door gave way in a whoosh, and Zoe and Earl stepped out onto the balcony, a bonehead and a naked woman, the night air roaring and smoky cool. Another couple were out there, too, murmuring privately. They were not wearing costumes. They smiled at Zoe and Earl. "Hi," said Zoe. She found the plastic-foam cooler, dug in and retrieved two beers. "Thanks," said Earl. His rubber breasts folded inward, dimpled and dented, as he twisted open the bottle. "Well," sighed Zoe anxiously. She had to learn not to be afraid of a man, the way, in your childhood, you learned not to be afraid of an earthworm or a bug. Often, when she spoke to men at parties, she rushed things in her mind. As the man politely blathered on, she would fall in love, marry, then find herself in a bitter custody battle with him for the kids and hoping for a reconciliation, so that despite all his betrayals she might no longer despise him, and, in the few minutes remaining, learn, perhaps, what his last name was and what he did for a living, though probably there was already too much history between them. She would nod, blush, turn away. "Evan tells me you're a history professor. Where do you teach?" "Just over the Indiana border into Illinois." He looked a little shocked. "I guess Evan didn't tell me that part." "She didn't?" "No." "Well, that's Evan for you. When we were kids we both had speech impediments." "That can be tough," said Earl. One of his breasts was hidden behind his drinking arm, but the other shone low and pink, full as a strawberry moon. "Yes, well, it wasn't a total loss. We used to go to what we called peach pearapy. For about ten years of my life, I had to map out every sentence in my mind, way ahead, before I said it. That was the only way I could get a coherent sentence out." Earl drank from his beer. "How did you do that? I mean, how did you get through?" You're Ugly, Too 665

"I told a lot of jokes. Jokes you know the lines to already. You can just say them. I love jokes. Jokes and songs." Earl smiled. He had on lipstick, a deep shade of red, but it was wearing off from the beer. "What's your favorite joke?" "Uh, my favorite joke is probably — O.K., all right. This guy goes into a doctor's office, and — " "I think I know this one," interrupted Earl, eagerly. He wanted to tell it himself. "A guy goes into a doctor's office, and the doctor tells him he's got some good news and some bad news — that one, right?" "I'm not sure," said Zoe. "This might be a different version." "So the guy says, 'Give me the bad news first,' and the doctor says, 'O.K. You've got three weeks to live.' And the guy cries, 'Three weeks to live! Doctor, what is the good news?' And the doctor says, 'Did you see that secretary out front? I finally fucked her.'" Zoe frowned. "That's not the one you were thinking of?" "No." There was accusation in her voice. "Mine was different." "Oh," said Earl. He looked away and then back again. "What kind of history do you teach?" "I teach American, mostly — eighteenth- and nineteenth-century." In graduate school, at bars the pickup line was always, "So what's your century?" "Occasionally, I teach a special theme course," she added. "Say, 'Hu- mor and Personality in the White House.' That's what my book's on." She thought of something someone once told her about bowerbirds, how they build elaborate structures before mating. "Your book's on humor?" "Yeah, and, well, when I teach a theme course like that I do all the centuries." So what's your century? "All three of them." "Pardon?" The breeze glistened her eyes. Traffic revved beneath them. She felt high and puny, like someone lifted into heaven by mistake and then spurned. "Three. There's only three." "Well, four, really." She was thinking of Jamestown, and of the Pil- grims coming here with buckles and witch hats to say their prayers. "I'm a photographer," said Earl. His face was starting to gleam, his rouge smearing in a sunset beneath his eyes. "Do you like that?" "Well, actually, I'm starting to feel it's a little dangerous." 666 LORRIE MOORE

"Really?" "Spending all your time in a dark room with that red light and all those chemicals. There's links with Parkinson's, you know." "No, I didn't." "I suppose I should wear rubber gloves, but I don't like to. Unless I'm touching it directly, I don't think of it as real." "Hmm," said Zoe. Alarm buzzed mildly through her. "Sometimes, when I have a cut or something, I feel the sting and think, Shit. I wash constantly and just hope. I don't like rubber over the skin like that." "Really." "I mean, the physical contact. That's what you want, or why bother?" "I guess," said Zoe. She wished she could think of a joke, something slow and deliberate with the end in sight. She thought of gorillas, how when they had been kept too long alone in cages they would smack each other in the head instead of mating. "Are you — in a relationship?" Earl suddenly blurted. "Now? As we speak?" "Well, I mean, I'm sure you have a relationship to your work." A smile, a little one, nestled in his mouth like an egg. She thought of zoos in parks, how when cities were under siege, during world wars, people ate the animals. "But I mean, with a man." "No, I'm not in a relationship with a man." She rubbed her chin with her hand and could feel the one bristly hair there. "But my last relation- ship was with a very sweet man," she said. She made something up. "From Switzerland. He was a botanist — a weed expert. His name was Jerry. I called him Jare. He was so funny. You'd go to the movies with him and all he would notice was the plants. He would never pay attention to the plot. Once, in a jungle movie, he started rattling off all these Latin names, out loud. It was very exciting for him." She paused, caught her breath. "Eventually, he went back to Europe to, uh, study the edelweiss." She looked at Earl. "Are you involved in a relationship? With a woman?" Earl shifted his weight and the creases in his body stocking changed, splintering outward like something broken. His pubic hair slid over to one hip, like a corsage on a saloon girl. "No," he said, clearing his throat. The steel wool in his underarms was inching down toward his biceps. "I've just gotten out of a marriage that was full of bad dialogue like 'You want more space? I'll give you more space!' Clonk. Your basic Three Stooges." You're Ugly, Too 667

Zoe looked at him sympathetically. "I suppose it's hard for love to recover after that." His eyes lit up. He wanted to talk about love. "But I keep thinking love should be like a tree. You look at trees and they've got bumps and scars from tumors, infestations, what have you, but they're still growing. Despite the bumps and bruises, they're — straight." "Yeah, well," said Zoe, "where I'm from they're all married or gay. Did you see that movie Death by Number?' Earl looked at her, a little lost. She was getting away from him. "No," he said. One of his breasts had slipped under his arm, tucked there like a baguette. She kept thinking of trees, of parks, of people in wartime eat- ing the zebras. She felt a stabbing pain in her abdomen. "Want some hors d'oeuvres?" Evan came pushing through the sliding door. She was smiling, though her curlers were coming out, hanging bedraggled at the ends of her hair like Christmas decorations, like food put out for the birds. She thrust forward a plate of stuffed mushrooms. "Are you asking for donations or giving them away?" said Earl wittily. He liked Evan, and he put his arm around her. "You know, I'll be right back," said Zoe. "Oh," said Evan, looking concerned. "Right back. I promise." Zoe hurried inside, across the living room into the bedroom, to the adjoining bath. It was empty; most of the guests were using the half- bath near the kitchen. She flicked on the light and closed the door. The pain had stopped, and she didn't really have to go to the bathroom, but she stayed there anyway, resting. In the mirror above the sink, she looked haggard beneath her bonehead, violet-grays showing under the skin like a plucked and pocky bird's. She leaned closer, raising her chin a little to find the bristly hair. It was there, at the end of the jaw, sharp and dark as a wire. She opened the medicine cabinet, pawed through it until she found some tweezers. She lifted her head again and poked at her face with the metal tips, grasping and pinching and missing. Out- side the door, she could hear two people talking low. They had come into the bedroom and were discussing something. They were sitting on the bed. One of them giggled in a false way. Zoe stabbed again at her chin, and it started to bleed a little. She pulled the skin tight along the jawbone, gripped the tweezers hard around what she hoped was the hair, and tugged. A tiny square of skin came away, but the hair re- mained, blood bright at the root of it. Zoe clenched her teeth. "Come 692 LORRIE MOORE on," she whispered. The couple outside in the bedroom were now telling stories, softly, and laughing. There was a bounce and squeak of mattress, and the sound of a chair being moved out of the way. Zoe aimed the tweezers carefully, pinched, then pulled gently, and this time the hair came, too, with a slight twinge of pain, and then a great flood of relief. "Yeah!" breathed Zoe. She grabbed some toilet paper and dabbed at her chin. It came away spotted with blood, and so she tore off some more and pressed hard until it stopped. Then she turned off the light, opened the door, and rejoined the party. "Excuse me," she said to the couple in the bedroom. They were the couple from the balcony, and they looked at her, a bit surprised. They had their arms around each other, and they were eating candy bars.

Earl was still out on the balcony, alone, and Zoe rejoined him there. "Hi," she said. He turned around and smiled. He had straightened his costume out a bit, though all the secondary sex characteristics seemed slightly doomed, destined to shift and flip and zip around again any mo- ment. "Are you O.K.?" he asked. He had opened another beer and was chugging. "Oh, yeah. I just had to go to the bathroom." She paused. "Actually, I have been going to a lot of doctors recently." "What's wrong?" asked Earl. "Oh, probably nothing. But they're putting me through tests." She sighed. "I've had sonograms. I've had mammograms. Next week I'm going in for a candygram." He looked at her, concerned. "I've had too many gram words," she said. "Here, I saved you these." He held out a napkin with two stuffed mushroom caps. They were cold and leaving oil marks on the napkin. "Thanks," said Zoe, and pushed them both in her mouth. "Watch," she said with her mouth full. "With my luck it'll be a gallbladder oper- ation." Earl made a face. "So your sister's getting married," he said, changing the subject. "Tell me, really, what you think about love." "Lover Hadn't they done this already? "I don't know." She chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. "All right. I'll tell you what I think about love. Here is a love story. This friend of mine — " "You've got something on your chin," said Earl, and he reached over to touch it. "What?" said Zoe, stepping back. She turned her face away and You're Ugly, Too 669

grabbed at her chin. A piece of toilet paper peeled off it, like tape. "It's nothing," she said. "It's just — it's nothing." Earl stared at her. "At any rate," she continued, "this friend of mine was this award-win- ning violinist. She traveled all over Europe and won competitions; she made records, she gave concerts, she got famous. But she had no social life. So one day she threw herself at the feet of this conductor she had a terrible crush on. He picked her up, scolded her gently, and sent her back to her hotel room. After that, she came home from Europe. She went back to her old hometown, stopped playing the violin, and took up with a local boy. This was in Illinois. He took her to some Big Ten bar every night to drink with his buddies from the team. He used to say things like 'Katrina here likes to play the violin,' and then he'd pinch her cheek. When she once suggested that they go home, he said, 'What, you think you're too famous for a place like this? Well, let me tell you something. You may think you're famous, but you're not famous fa- mous.' Two famouses. 'No one here's ever heard of you.' Then he went up and bought a round of drinks for everyone but her. She got her coat, went home, and shot a bullet through her head." Earl was silent. "That's the end of my love story," said Zoe. "You're not at all like your sister," said Earl. "Oh, really," said Zoe. The air had gotten colder, the wind singing minor and thick as a dirge. "No." He didn't want to talk about love anymore. "You know, you should wear a lot of blue — blue and white — around your face. It would bring out your coloring." He reached an arm out to show her how the blue bracelet he was wearing might look against her skin, but she swatted it away. "Tell me, Earl. Does the word 'fag' mean anything to you?" He stepped back, away from her. He shook his head in disbelief. "You know, I just shouldn't try to go out with career women. You're all stricken. A guy can really tell what life has done to you. I do better with women who have part-time jobs." "Oh, yes?" said Zoe. She had once read an article entitled "Profes- sional Women and the Demographics of Grief." Or, no, it was a poem. If there were a lake, the moonlight would dance across it in conniptions. She remembered that line. But perhaps the title was "The Empty House: Aesthetics of Barrenness." Or maybe "Space Gypsies: Girls in Academe." She had forgotten. 670 LORRIE MOORE

Earl turned and leaned on the railing of the balcony. It was getting late. Inside, the party guests were beginning to leave. The sexy witches were already gone. "Live and learn," Earl murmured. "Live and get dumb," replied Zoe. Beneath them on Lexington there were no cars, just the gold rush of an occasional cab. He leaned hard on his elbows, brooding. "Look at those few people down there," he said. "They look like bugs. You know how bugs are kept under control? They're sprayed with bug hormones — female bug hormones. The male bugs get so crazy in the presence of this hormone they're screwing everything in sight — trees, rocks, everything but female bugs. Population control. That's what's happening in this country," he said drunkenly. "Hormones sprayed around, and now men are screwing rocks. Rocks!" In the back, the Magic Marker line on his buttocks spread wide, a sketchy black on pink, like a funnies page. Zoe came up, slow, from behind, and gave him a shove. His arms slipped forward, off the railing, out over the street. Beer spilled out of his bottle, raining twenty stories down to the street. "Hey, what are you doing!" he said, whipping around. He stood straight and readied, and moved away from the railing, sidestepping Zoe. "What the hell are you doing?" "Just kidding," she said. "I was just kidding." But he gazed at her, appalled and frightened, his Magic Marker buttocks turned away now toward all of downtown, a naked pseudo-woman with a blue bracelet at the wrist, trapped out on a balcony with — with what? "Really, I was just kidding!" Zoe shouted. The wind lifted the hair up off her head, skyward in spines behind the bone. If there were a lake, the moonlight would dance across it in conniptions. She smiled at him and wondered how she looked. I Toward a Feminist Poetics The Queen's Looking Glass: Female Creativity, Male Images ofWomen, and the Metaphor of Literary Paternity

And the lady of the house was seen only as she appeared in each room, according to the nature of the lord of the room. None saw the whole of her, none but herself. For the light which she was was both her mirror and her body. None could tell the whole of her, none but herself. -Laura Riding Alas! A woman that attempts the pen Such an intruder on the rights of men, Such a presumptuous Creature is esteem'd The fault can by no venue be redeem'd. -Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea As to all that nonsense Henry and Larry talked about, the necessity of"l am God" in order to create (I suppose they mean "I am God, I am not a woman") .... this "I am God," which makes creation an act ofsolitude and pride, this image of God alone making sky, earth, sea, it is this image which has confused woman. -Anats Nin

Is a pen a metaphorical penis? Gerard Manley Hopkins seems to have thought so. In a letter to his friend R. W. Dixon in 1886 he confided a crucial feature of his theory of poetry. The artist's "most essential quality," he declared, is "masterly execution, which is a kind of male gift, and especially marks off men from women, the begetting of one's thought on paper, on verse, or whatever the matter is." In addition, he noted that "on better consideration it strikes me that the mastery I speak of is not so much in the mind as a puberty m the life of that quality. The male quality is the creative gift." 1

3 4 Toward a Feminist Poetics The Queen's Looking Glass 5

Male sexuality~ in other words, is not just analogically but actually novelist." But they can also, of course, be used to describe both the the essence of lnerary power. The poet's pen is in some sense (even author and the authority of any literary text, a point Hopkins's more than figuratively) a penis. sexual/aesthetic theory seems to have been designed to elaborate. Eccentric and obscure though he was, Hopkins was articulating Indeed, Said himself later observes that a convention of most literary a concept central to that Victorian culture of which he was in this texts is "that the unity or integrity of the text is maintained by a series cas~ a representative male citizen. But of course the patriarchal of genealogical connections: author- text, beginning-middle-end, nouon. that the writer "fathers" his text just as God fathered the text- meaning, reader- interpretation, and so on. Underneath all world IS and has been all-pervasive in Western literary civilization thtse is the imagery of succession, of paternity, or hierarchy" (italics ours).3 ~o much so that, as Edward Said has shown, the metaphor is buil~ There is a sense in which the very notion of paternity is itself, as mto .the v~ry word~ ~utho~, ~ith which writer, deity, and pater jamilias Stephen Dedalus puts it in Ulysses, a "legal fiction," 4 a story requiring ~re ldenufie~. ~a1d s m1matu~e meditation on the word authority imagination if not faith. A man cannot verify his fatherhood by 1s worth q uoung m full because It summarizes so much that is relevant either sense or reason, after all; that his child is his is in a sense a here: tale he tells himself to explain the infant's existence. Obviously, the anxiety implicit in such storytelling urgently needs not only the re­ Authority suggests to me a constellation of linked meanings: not assurances of male superiority that patriarchal misogyny implies, but only, as the OED tells us, "a power to enforce obedience " also such compensatory fictions of the Word as those embodied in or :'a derived or delegated power," or "a power to influen~e the genealogical imagery Said describes. Thus it is possible to trace ac~1~n,". or "a power to inspire belief," or "a person whose o~m10n IS accepted"; not only those, but a connection as well the history of this compensatory, sometimes frankly stated and some­ times submerged imagery that elaborates upon what Stephen Dedalus With autho_r- that is, a person who originates or gives existence calls the "mystical estate" of paternitys through the works of many to somethmg, a begetter, beginner, father, or ancestor, a person literary theoreticians besides Hopkins and Said. Defining poetry as also who sets forth written statements. There is still another a mirror held up to nature, the mimetic aesthetic that begins with cluster of meanings: author is tied to the past participle auctus of Aristotle and descends through Sidney, Shakespeare, and Johnson t.he verb au~ere ; therefore auctor, according to Eric Partridge, is implies that the poet, like a lesser God, has made or engendered an ~lterall.y an mcre~er and.t?us a founder. Auctoritas is production, alternative, mirror-universe in which he actually seems to enclose or I~venuo~, cause, m addltlon to meaning a right of possession. trap shadows of reality. Similarly, Coleridge's Romantic concept of Fmally, It means continuance, or a causing to continue. Taken the human "imagination or esemplastic power" is of a virile, genera­ tog~ther these meanings are all grounded in the following tive force which echoes "the eternal act of creation in the infinite I ~ot~ons: ( I) t~at o~ the power of an individual to initiate, AM," while Ruskin's phallic-sounding "Penetrative Imagination" is ~nsutute, establish-m short, to begin; (2) that this power and a "possession-taking faculty" and a "piercing ... mind's tongue" that Its product a.re ~n. increas.e over what had been there previously; seizes, cuts down, and gets at the root of experience in order "to (3) th~t the ~ndiVtdual wtelding this power controls its issue and throw up what new shoots it will." 6 In all these aesthetics the poet, wha~ IS. den~ed therefrom; (4) that authority maintains the contmuny of 1ts course. 2 like God the Father, is a paternalistic ruler of the fictive world he has created. Shelley called him a "legislator." Keats noted, speaking of In conclusion, Said, who is discussing "The Novel as B · · I t · , k egmnmg writers, that "the antients [sic] were Emperors of vast Provinces" n ent10n, rem~r s that "All four of these [last] abstractions can though "each of the moderns" is merely an "Elector of Hanover." 7 be used t~ descnbe the way in which narrative fiction asserts itself In medieval philosophy, the network of connections among sexual, psychologtcally and aesthetically ~hrough the technical efforts of the literary, and theological metaphors is equally complex: God the 6 Toward a Feminist Poetics The Q.ueen's Looking Glass 7

Father both engenders the cosmos and, as Ernst Robert Curtius writer respond to his muse's quasi-sexual excitation with an out­ notes, writes the Book of Nature: both tropes describe a single act pouring of the aesthetic energy Hopkins called "the fine delight that of creation.8 In addition, the Heavenly Author's ultimate eschato­ fathers thought" - a delight poured seminally from pen to page-but logical power is made manifest when, as the Liber Scriptus of the as the author of an enduring text the writer engages the attention traditional requiem mass indicates, He writes the Book ofJudgment. of the future in exactly the same way that a king (or father) "owns" More recently, male artists like the Earl of Rochester in the seven­ the homage of the present. No sword-wielding general could rule so teenth century and Auguste Renoir in the nineteenth, have frankly long or possess so vast a kingdom. defined aesthetics based on male sexual delight. "I ... never Rhym'd, Finally, that such a notion of "ownership" or possession is em­ but for my Pintle's (penis's) sake," declares Rochester's witty Timon,a bedded in the metaphor of paternity leads to yet another implication and (according to the painter Bridget Riley) Renoir "is supposed to of this complex metaphor. For if the author/father is owner of his have said that he painted his paintings with his prick." 1o Clearly, text and of his reader's attention, he is also, of course, owner/possessor both these artists believe, with Norman 0. Brown, that "the penis of the subjects of his text, that is to say of those figures, scenes, and is the head of the body," and they might both agree, too, with John events-those brain children-he has both incarnated in black and Irwin's suggestion that the relationship "of the masculine self with white and "bound" in cloth or leather. Thus, because he is an author, the feminine-masculine work is also an autoerotic act ... a kind of a "man of letters" is simultaneously, like his divine counterpart, creative onanism in which through the use of the phallic pen on the a father, a master or ruler, and an owner: the spiritual type of a 'pure space' of the virgin page ... the self is continually spent and patriarch, as we understand that term in Western society. wasted .... " 11 No doubt it is for all these reasons, moreover, that poets have traditionally used a vocabulary derived from the patri­ archal "family romance" to describe their relations with each other. Where does such an implicitly or explicitly patriarchal theory of As Harold Bloom has pointed out, "from the sons of Homer to the literature leave literary women? If the pen is a metaphorical penis, sons of Ben Jonson, poetic influence (has] been described as a filial with what organ can females generate texts? The question may seem relationship," a relationship of "sonship." The fierce struggle at the frivolous, but as our epigraph from Ana:is Nin indicates, both the heart of literary history, says Bloom, is a "battle between strong patriarchal etiology that defines a solitary Father God as the only equals, father and son as mighty opposites, Laius and Oedipus at creator of all things, and the male metaphors ofliterary creation that the crossroads." a depend upon such an etiology, have long "confused" literary women, Though many of these writers use the metaphor ofliterary paternity readers and writers alike. For what if such a proudly masculine in different ways and for different purposes, all seem overwhelmingly cosmic Author is the sole legitimate model for all earthly authors? to agree that a literary text is not only speech quite literally embodied, Or worse, what if the male generative power is not just the only but also power mysteriously made manifest, made flesh. In patri­ legitimate power but the only power there is? That literary theore­ archal Western culture, therefore, the text's author is a father, a ticians from Aristotle to Hopkins seemed to believe this was so no progenitor, a procreator, an aesthetic patriarch whose pen is an doubt prevented many women from ever "attempting the pen"-to instrument of generative power like his penis. More, his pen's power, use Anne Finch's phrase- and caused enormous anxiety in gener­ like his penis's power, is not just the ability to generate life but the ations of those women who were "presumptuous" enough to dare power to create a posterity to which he lays claim, as, in Said's such an attempt. Jane Austen's Anne Elliot understates the case paraphrase of Partridge, "an increaser and thus a founder." In this when she decorously observes, toward the end of Persuasion, that respect, the pen is truly mightier than its phallic counterpart the "men have had every advantage of us in telling their story. Education sword, and in patriarchy more resonantly sexual. Not only does the has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their 8 Toward a Feminist Poetics The QJteen's I.AJoking Glass 9 hands" (II, chap. 11}.13 For, as Anne Finch's complaint suggests, Whilst we beside you but as Cyphers stand the pen has been defined as not just accidentally but essentially a T' increase your Numbers and to swell th' account male "tool," and therefore not only inappropriate but actually alien Of your delights which from our charms amount to women. Lacking Austen's demure irony, Finch's passionate And sadly are by this distinction taught protest goes almost as far toward the center of the metaphor of liter­ That since the Fall (by our seducement wrought) ary paternity as Hopkins's letter to Canon Dixon. Not only is "a Our is the greater losse as ours the greater faultY1 woman t~at at.tempts the pen" an intrusive and "presumptuous Creature, she IS absolutely unredeemable: no virtue can outweigh Since Eve's daughters have fallen so much lower than Adam's sons, the "fault" of her presumption because she has grotesquely crossed this passage says, all females are "Cyphers"- nullities, vacancies­ boundaries dictated by Nature: existing merely and punningly to increase male "Numbers" (either They tell us, we mistake our sex and way; poems or persons} by pleasuring either men's bodies or their minds, Good breeding, fassion, dancing, dressing, play their penises or their pens. Are the accomplishments we shou'd desire; In that case, however, devoid of what Richard Chase once called To write, or read, or think, or to enquire "the masculine tlan," and implicitly rejecting even the slavish con­ solations ofher "femininity," a literary woman is doubly a "Cypher," Wou'd. cloud our beauty, and exaust our time' An~ mterrupt the conquests of our prime; for she is really a "eunuch," to use the striking figure Germaine Wh1lst the dull mannage, of a servile house Greer applied to all women in patriarchal society. Thus Anthony Is held by some, our outmost art and use. a Burgess recently declared that Jane Austen's novels fail because her writing "lacks a strong male thrust," and William Gass lamented ~~cause th~y are by definition male activities, this passage implies, that literary women "lack that blood congested genital drive which wntmg, readmg, and thinking are not only alien but also inimical energizes every great style." 17 The assumptions that underlie their to "female" characteristics. One hundred years later, in a famous statements were articulated more than a century ago by the nine­ letter to Charlotte Bronte, Robert Southey rephrased the same notion: teenth-century editor-critic Rufus Griswold. Introducing an antho­ "Literature is not the business of a woman's life, and it cannot be." u logy entitled The Female Poets of America, Griswold outlined a theory ~t can~ot b.e, the metaphor of literary paternity implies, because it of literary sex roles which builds upon, and clarifies, these grim im­ ~s ~hysiOIOgically ~well~ sociologically impossible. If male sexuality plications of the metaphor ofliterary paternity. IS mtegrally ~so~1ated '"':1th the assertive presence of literary power, fem~e sexuahty 1s assoCiated with the absence of such power, with It is less easy to be assured of the genuineness of literary ability the 1dea- expressed by the nineteenth-century thinker Otto Wein­ in women than in men. The moral nature of women, in its inger-that "woman has no share in ontological reality." As we finest and richest development, partakes of some of the qualities ~hall see, ~ fur~her ~~plication of the paternity/creativity metaphor of genius; it assumes, at least, the similitude of that which in IS the notton (~mphcn both in Weininger and in Southey's letter) men is the characteristic or accompaniment of the highest grade that women e.xtst only ~o be acted on by men, both as literary and of mental inspiration. We are in danger, therefore, of mistaking as sensu~! objects. Agam one of Anne Finch's poems explores the for the efflorescent energy of creative intelligence, that which assumptions submerged in so many literary theories. Addressing three is only the exuberance of personal "feelings unemployed." ... male poets, she exclaims: The most exquisite susceptibility of the spirit, and the capacity to mirror in dazzling variety the effects which circumstances Happy you three! happy the Race of Men! or surrounding minds work upon it, may be accompanied by Born to inform or to correct the Pen no power to originate, nor even, in any proper sense, to reproduce. [Italics To proffitts pleasures freedom and command ours]I8 10 Toward a Feminist Poetics The Qjuen 's Looking Glass 11

Since Griswold has actually compiled a collection of poems by women, Conscious of wants, still with contracted wing, he plainly does not believe that all women lack reproductive or To some few friends, and to thy sorrows sing; generative literary power all the time. His gender-definitions imply, For groves ofLawrell, thou wert never meant; however, that when such creative energy appears in a woman it Be dark enough thy shades, and be thou there content. 20 may be anomalous, freakish, because as a "male" characteristic it is essentially "unfeminine." Cut off from generative energy, in a dark and wintry world, Finch The converse of these explicit and implicit definitions of "femi­ seems to be defining herself here not only as a "Cypher" but as "the ninity" may also be true for those who develop literary theories widow of an insight lost." based upon the "mystical estate" of fatherhood: if a woman lacks generative literary power, then a man who loses or abuses such power becomes like a eunuch- or like a woman. When the imprisoned Finch's despairing (if ironic) acceptance of male expectations and Marquis de Sade was denied "any use of pencil, ink, pen, and paper," designs summarizes in a single e~isode the coer~ive .power not only declares Roland Barthes, he was figuratively emasculated, for "the of cultural constraints but of the hterary texts wh1ch mcarnate them. scriptural sperm" could flow no longer, and "without exercise, with­ For it is as much from literature as from "life" that literate women out a pen, Sade [become] bloated, [became] a eunuch." Similarly, learn they are "to be dull/Expected and dessigned." As Leo Bersani puts it written "language doesn't merely describe identity but when Hopkins wanted to explain to R. W. Dixon the aesthetic ~e consequences of a lack. of male mastery, he seized upon an explanation actuall; produces moral and perhaps even physical ide?t.ity.. · · which developed the implicit parallel between women and eunuchs, have to allow for a kind of dissolution or at least elasuclty of bemg declaring that "if the life" is not "conveyed into the work and ... induced by an immersion in literature." 21 A century .and a ?alf displayed there ... the product is one of those hens' eggs that are good earlier,Jane Austen had Anne Elliot's interlocutor, Ca~t~1n Harv1lle, to eat and look just like live ones but never hatch" (italics ours). u make a related point in Persuasion. Arguing women s mconsta~cy And when, late in his life, he tried to define his own sense of sterility, over Anne's heated objections, he notes that "all histories are aga~nst his thickening writer's block, he described himself (in the sonnet you- all stories, prose, and verse .... I could bring you fifty q~ota­ "The Fine Delight That Fathers Thought") both as a eunuch and tions in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not thmk I as a woman, specifically a woman deserted by male power: "the widow ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon of an insight lost," surviving in a diminished "winter world" that woman's inconstancy" (II, chap. 11 ). To this Anne responds, as entirely lacks "the roll, the rise, the carol, the creation" of male we have seen, that the pen has been in male hands. In the context generative power, whose "strong JSpur" is phallically "live and of Harville's speech, her remark implies that women have not only lancing like the blow pipe flame." And once again some lines from been excluded from authorship but in addition they have been sub­ one ofAnne Finch's plaintive protests against male literary hegemony just to (and subjects of) male authority. With Chaucer's astute Wife seem to support Hopkins's image of the powerless and sterile woman of Bath, therefore, Anne might demand, "Who peynted the leoun, artist. Remarking in the conclusion of her "Introduction" to her tel me who?" And, like the Wife's, her own answer to her own Poems that women are "to be dull J Expected and dessigned" she rhetorical question would emphasize our culture's historical confusion does not repudiate such expectations, but on the contrary admonishes ofliterary authorship with patriarchal authority: herself, with bitter irony, to be dull: · By God, ifwommen hadde writen stories, As clerkes han withinne hir oratories, Be caution'd then my Muse, and still retir'd; They wolde han writen of men more wikednesse Nor be dispis'd, aiming to be admir'd; Than all the mark of Adam may redresse. _...

12 Toward a Feminist Potties The Q.uem's Looking Glass 13

In other words, what Bersani, Austen, and Chaucer all imply is texts, continually elaborating the metaphor ofliterary paternity, have that, precisely because a writer "fathers" his text, his literary crea­ continually proclaimed that, in Honore de Balzac's ambiguous word~ tions (as we pointed out earlier) are his possession, his property. "woman's virtue is man's greatest invention." 24 A characteristically Having defined them in language and thus generated them, he owns condensed and oracular comment by Norman 0. Brown perfectly them, controls them, and encloses them on the printed page. Describ­ summarizes the assumptions on which all such texts are based: ing his earliest sense of vocation as a writer, jean-Paul Sartre recalled Poetry, the creative act, the act oflife, the archetypal sexual act. in Les Mots his childhood belief that "to write was to engrave new Sexuality is poetry. The lady is our creation, or Pygmalion's beings upon (the infinite Tables of the Word) or ... to catch living 22 statue. The lady is the poem; [Petrarch's] Laura is, really, things in the trap ofphrases." Naive as such a notion may seem on poetry.25 the face of it, it is not "wholly an illusion, for it is his [Sartre's) truth," as one commentator observes23-and irideed it is every writer's No doubt this complex of metaphors and etiologies simply reflects "truth," a truth which has traditionally led male authors to assume not just the fiercely patriarchal structure of Western society but also patriarchal rights of ownership over the female "characters" they the underpinning of misogyny upon which that severe patriarchy engrave upon "the infinite Tables of the Word." has stood. The roots of "authority" tell us, after all, that if woman is Male authors have also, of course, generated male characters over man's property then he must have authored her, just as surely as whom they would seem to have had similar rights of ownership. they tell us that if he authored her she must be his property. As a But further implicit in the metaphor of literary paternity is the idea creation "penned" by man, moreover, woman has been "penned up" that each man, arriving at what Hopkins caJJed the "puberty" of or "penned in." As a sort of "sentence" man has spoken, she has his creative gift, has the ability, even perhaps the obligation, to talk herself been "sentenced": fated, jailed, for he has both "indited" back to other men by generating alternative fictions of his own. her and "indicted" her. As a thought he has "framed," she has been Lacking the pen/penis which would enable them similarly to refute both "framed" (enclosed) in his texts, glyphs, graphics, and "framed one fiction by another, women in patriarchal societies have histori­ up" (found guilty, found wanting) in his cosmologies. For as Humpty cally been reduced to mere properties, to characters and images im­ Dumpty tells Alice in Through the Looking Glass, the "master" of prisoned in male texts because generated solely, as Anne Elliot and words, utterances, phrases, literary properties, "can manage the Anne Finch observe, by male expectations and designs. whole lot of them!" 26 The etymology and etiology of masculine Like the metaphor ofliterary paternity itself, this corollary notion authority are, it seems, almost necessarily identical. However, for that the chief creature man has generated is woman has a long and women who felt themselves to be more than, in every sense, the complex history. From Eve, Minerva, Sophia, and Galatea onward, properties ofliterary texts, the problem posed by such authority was after all, patriarchal mythology defines women as created by, from, neither metaphysical nor philological, but (as the pain expressed by and for men, the children of male brains, ribs, and ingenuity. For Anne Finch and Anne Elliot indicates) psychological. Since both Blake the eternal female was at her best an Emanation of the male patriarchy and its texts subordinate and imprison women, before creative principle. For Shelley she was an epi-psyche, a soul out of women can even attempt that pen which is so rigorously kept from the poet's soul, whose inception paraJJeled on a spiritual plane the them they must escape just those male texts which, defining them solider births of Eve and Minerva. Throughout the history of Western as "Cyphers," deny them the autonomy to formulate alternatives c~lture, moreover, male-engendered female figures as superficially to the authority that has imprisoned them and kept them from disparate as Milton's Sin, Swift's Chloe, and Yeats's Crazy Jane attempting the pen. have incarnated men's ambivalence not only toward female sexuality The vicious circularity of this problem helps explain the curious but toward their own (male) physicality. At the same time, male passivity with which Finch responded (or pretended to respond) to 14 Toward a Feminist Poetics The Ofleen's Looking Glass 15

male expectations and designs, and it helps explain, too, the centuries­ the eternal type rather than the mortal self. Such makeup, in long silence ofso many women who must have had talents comparable Mrica or Japan, may reach the, to us, somewhat estranging to Finch's. A final paradox of the metaphor of literary paternity is degree of a lifeless mask-and yet that is precisely the purpose the fact that in the same way an author both generates and imprisons of it: where nothing is lifelike, nothing speaks of death. 31 his fictive creatures, he silences them by depriving them of autonomy (that is, of the power of independent speech) even as he gives them For yet another reason, then, it is no wonder that women have life. He silences them and, as Keats's " Ode on a Grecian Urn" historically hesitated to attempt the pen. Authored by a male God suggests, he stills them, or- embedding them in the marble of his and by a godlike male, killed into a "perfect" image of herself, the art- kills them. As Albert Gelpi neatly puts it, "the artist kills woman writer's self-contemplation may be said to have begun with experience into art, for temporal experience can only escape death a searching glance into the mirror of the male-inscribed literary by dying into the 'immortality' of artistic form. The fixity of 'life' text. There she would see at first only those eternal lineaments fixed in art and the fluidity of 'life' in nature are incompatible." 27 The pen, on her like a mask' to conceal her dreadful and bloody link to nature. therefore, is not only mightier than the sword, it is also like the sword But looking long enough, looking hard enough, she would see- like in its power-its need, even- to kill. And this last attribute of the the speaker of Mary Elizabeth Coleridge's "The Other Side of the pen once again seems to be associatively linked with its metaphorical Mirror" -an enraged prisoner: herself. The poem describing this maleness. Simone de Beauvoir has commented that the human male's vision is central to the feminist poetics we are trying to construct: "transcendence" of nature is symbolized by his ability to hunt and kill, just as the human female's identification with nature, her role I sat before my glass one day, as a symbol of immanence, is expressed by her central involvement And conjured up a vision bare, in that life-giving but involuntary birth process which perpetuates the Unlike the aspects glad and gay, species. Thus, superiority- or authority-"has been accorded in That erst were found reflected there­ humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills."28 The vision of a woman, wild In D. H. Lawrence's words, "the Lords of Life are the Masters of With more than womanly despair. Death"- and therefore, patriarchal poetics implies, they are the Her hair stood back on either side masters of art. 29 A face bereft of loveliness. Commentators on female subordination from Freud and Horney It had no envy now to hide to de Beauvoir, Wolfgang Lederer, and most recently, Dorothy What once no man on earth could guess. Dinnerstein, have of course explored other aspects of the relationship It formed the thorny aureole between the sexes that also lead men to want figuratively tO "kill" Of hard unsanctified distress. . ' women. What Horney called male "dread" of the female is a phe­ Her lips were open-not a sound nomenon to which Lederer has devoted a long and scholarly book. so Came through the parted lines of red. Elaborating on de Beauvoir's assertion that as mother oflife "woman's Whate'er it was, the hideous wound first lie, her first treason [seems to be] that of life itself- life which, In silence and in secret bled. though clothed in the most attractive forms, is always infested by the No sigh relieved her speechless woe, ferments of age and death," Lederer remarks upon woman's own She had no voice to speak her dread. tendency to "kill" herself into art in order "to appeal to man": And in her lurid eyes there shone From the Paleolithic on, we have evidence that woman, through The dying flame of life's desire, careful coiffure, through adornment and makeup, tried to stress Made mad because its hope was gone, • 16 Toward a Feminist Poetics Thl (bum's Looking Glass 17

And kindled at the leaping fire the images on the surface of the glass, with, that is, those mythic Of jealousy, and fierce revenge, masks male artists have fastened over her human face both to lessen And strength that could not change nor tire. their dread of her "inconstancy" and-by identifying her with the Shade of a shadow in the glass, "eternal types" they have themselves invented-to possess her more thoroughly. Specifically, as we will try to show here, a woman writer 0 set the crystal surface free! must examine, assimilate, and transcend the extreme images of Pass-as the fairer visions pass­ "angel" and "monster" which male authors have generated for her. Nor ever more return, to be Before we women can write, declared Virginia Woolf, we must "kilt" The ghost of a distracted hour, the "angel in the house." 36 In other words, women must kill the That heard me whisper, 'I am she!'32 aesthetic ideal through which they themselves have been "kjJled" What this poem suggests is that, although the woman who is the into art. And similarly, all women writers must kill the angel's prisoner of the mirror/text's images has "no voice to speak her dread," necessary opposite and double, the "monster" in the house, whose although "no sigh" interrupts "her speechless woe," she has an Medusa-face also kills female creativity. For us as feminist critics, invincible sense of her own autonomy, her own interiority; she has a however, the Woolfian act of"killing" both angels and monsters must sense, to paraphrase Chaucer's Wife of Bath, of the authority of her here begin with an understanding of the nature and origin of these own experience.38 The power of metaphor, says Mary Elizabeth images. At this point in our construction of a feminist poetics, then, Coleridge's poem, can only extend so far. Finally, no human creature we really must dissect in order to murder. And we must particularly can be completely silenced by a text or by an image. Just as stories do this in order to understand literature by women because, as we notoriously have a habit of"getting away" from their authors, human shall show, the images of"angel" and "monster" have been so ubiq­ beings since Eden have had a habit of defying authority, both divine uitous throughout literature by men that they have also pervaded and literary.34 women's writing to such 'an extent that few women have definitively Once more the debate in which Austen's Anne Elliot and her "killed" either figure. Rather, the female imagination has perceived Captain Harville engage is relevant here, for it is surely no accident itself, as it were, through a glass darkly: until quite recently the woman that the question these two characters are discussing is woman's writer has had (ifonly unconsciously) to define herself as a mysterious "inconstancy" -her refusal, that is, to be fixed or "killed" by an creature who resides behind the angel or monster or angel/monster author/owner, her stubborn insistence on her own way. That male image that lives on what Mary Elizabeth Coleridge called "the authors berate her for this refusal even while they themselves generate crystal surface." female charact~rs who (as we shall see) perversely display "mon­ For all literary artists, of course, self-definition necessarily precedes strous" autonomy is one of the ironies of literary art. From a female self-assertion: the creative "I AM" cannot be uttered if the "I" knows perspective, however, such "inconstancy" can only be encouraging, not what it is. But for the female artist the essential process of self­ for-implying duplicity-it suggests that women themselves have definition is complicated by all those patriarchal definitions that the power to create themselves as characters, even perhaps the power intervene between herself and herself. From Anne Finch's Ardelia, to reach toward the woman trapped on the other side of the mirror/ who struggles to escape the male designs in which she feels herself text and help her to climb out. enmeshed, to Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus," who tells "Herr Doktor ... Herr Enemy" that "I am your opus,/ I am your valu­ able,"36 the woman writer acknowledges with pain, confusion, and Before the woman writer can journey through the looking glass anger that what she sees in the mirror is usually a male construct, toward literary autonomy, however, she must come to terms with the "pure gold baby" of male brains, a glittering and wholly artificial 18 Toward a Feminisl Poelics The Queen's Looking Glass 19 child. With Christina Rossetti, moreover, she realizes that the male In her last kiss upon the baby-mouth artist often "feeds" upon his female subject's face "not as she is but My father pushed down on the bed for that; as she fills his dreams." 37 Finally, as "A Woman's Poem" of 1859 Or my dead mother, without smile or kiss, simply puts it, the woman writer insists that "You [men] make the Buried at Florence. at worlds wherein you move .... Our world (alas you make that too!)" -and in its narrow confines, "shut in four blank walls ... we act The female forms Aurora sees in her dead mother's picture are extreme, melodramatic, gothic- "Ghost, fiend, and angel, fairy, our parts." 38 witch, and sprite" -specifically, as she tells us, because her reading Though the highly stylized women's roles to which this last poem alludes are all ultimately variations upon the roles of angel and merges with her seeing. What this implies, however, is not only that monster, they seem on the surface quite varied, because so many she herself is fated to inhabit male-defined masks and costumes, as masks, reflecting such an elaborate typology, have been invented her mother did, but that male-defined masks and costumes inevitably inhabit her, altering her vision. Aurora's self-development as a poet is for wome.n. A crucial passage from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's the central concern of Barrett Browning's Bildungsroman in verse, but Au~ora Letg~ suggests both the mystifying deathliness and the mys­ if she is to be a poet she must deconstruct the dead self that is a male tenous vanety female artists perceive in male imagery of women. Contemplating a portrait of her mother which, significantly, was "opus" and discover a living, "inconstant" self. She must, in other words, replace the "copy" with the "individuality," as Barrett made after its subject was dead (so that it is a kind of death mask Browning once said she thought she herself had done in her mature an image of a woman metaphorically killed into art) the youn~ 0 Aurora broods on the work's iconography. Noting that her mother's art.' Significantly, however, the "copy" selves depicted in Aurora's mother's portrait ultimately represent, once again, the moral extremes chambermaid had insisted upon having her dead mistress painted of angel ("angel," "fairy," and perhaps "sprite") and monster in "~he red stiff silk" of her court dress rather than in an "English­ fashiOned shroud," she remarks that the effect of this unlikely costume ("ghost," "witch," "fiend"). In her brilliant and influential analysis of the question "Is Female was "very strange." As the child stared at the painting, her mother's to Male as Nature Is to Culture?" the anthropologist Sherry Ortner "swan-like supernatural white life" seemed to mingle with "whatever notes that in every society "the psychic mode associated with women I last read, or heard, or dreamed," and thus in its charismatic beauty, her mother's image became seems to stand at both the bottom and the top of the scale of human modes of relating." Attempting to account for this "symbolic ambi­ by turns guity," Ortner explains "both the subversive feminine symbols Ghost, fiend, and angel, fairy, witch, and sprite; (witches, evil eye, menstrual pollution, castrating mothers) and the A dauntless Muse who eyes a dreadful Fate; feminine symbols of transcendence (mother goddesses, merciful dis­ A loving Psyche who loses sight of Love; pensers of salvation, female symbols ofjustice )" by pointing out that A still Medusa with mild milky brows, women "can appear from certain points of view to stand both All curdled and all clothed upon with snakes under and over (but really simply outside of) the sphere of culture's Whose slime falls fast as sweat will; or anon hegemony." 41 That is, precisely because a woman is denied the au­ Our Lady of the Passion, stabbed with swords tonomy- the subjectivity-that the pen represents, she is not only Where the Babe sucked; or Lamia in her first excluded from culture (whose emblem might well be the pen) but Moonlighted pallor, ere she shrunk and blinked, she also becomes herself an embodiment of just those extremes of And shuddering wriggled down to the unclean; mysterious and intransigent Otherness which culture confro0 ts with Or my own mother, leaving her last smile worship or fear, love or loathing. As "Ghost, fiend, and angel, fairy, 20 Toward a Feminist Poetics Tlu Quem's Looking Glass 21

witch, and sprite," she mediates between the male artist and the Beatrice. Similarly, Milton, despite his undeniable misogyny (which Unknown, simultaneously teaching him purity and instructing him we shall examine later), speaks of having been granted a vision of in degradation. But what of her own artistic growth? Because that "my late espoused saint," who growth has for so long been radically qualified by the angel- and monster-imagery the literary woman sees in the looking glass of the Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. male-authored text, some understanding of such imagery is an Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight, essential preliminary to any study of literature by women. As Joan Love sweetness goodness, in her person shined Didion recently noted, "writing is an aggression" precisely because So clear, as in no face with more delight. it is "an imposition ... an invasion of someone else's most private In death, in other words, Milton's human wife has taken on both the 42 space.'' Like Leo Bersani's observation that an "elasticity of being celestial brightness of Mary and (since she has been ."washed fro~ [is) induced by an immersion in literature," her remark has special spot of childbed taint") the virginal purity of Beatnce. In f~ct, If significance in this connection. A thorough study of those male con­ she could be resurrected in the flesh she might now be an angel m the structs which have invaded the "most private space" of countless house, interpreting heaven's luminous mysteries to her wondering literate women would require hundreds of pages-indeed, a number husband. of excellent books have been devoted to the subject43-but we will The famous vision of the "Eternal Feminine" (Das Ewig-Weibliche) attempt here a brief review of the fundamental extremes of angel with which Goethe's Faust concludes presents women from penitent and monster, in order to demonstrate the severity of the male text's prostitutes to a~gelic virgins in just this role of interpreters or inter­ "imposition" upon women. mediaries between the divine Father and his human sons. The German of Faust's "Chorus Mysticus" is extraordinarily difficult to translate in verse, but Hans Eichner's English paraphrase easily The ideal woman that male authors dream of generating is always suggests the ways in which Goethe's image of female intercessors an angel, as Norman 0. Brown's comment about Laura/poetry seems almost to be a revision of Milton's "late espoused saint": "All suggested. At the same time, from Virginia Woolf's point of view, that is transitory is merely symbolical; here (that is to say, in the the "angel in the house" is the most pernicious image male authors scene before you) the inaccessible is (symbolically) portrayed an~ have ever imposed upon literary women. Where and how did this the inexpressible is (symbolically) made manifest. The eternal femi­ ambiguous image originate, particularly the trivialized Victorian nine (i.e. the eternal principle symbolized by woman) dr~ws us to angel in the house that so disturbed Woolf? In the Middle Ages, of higher spheres." Meditating on the exact nature of this e.~~mal course, mankind's great teacher of purity was the Virgin Mary, a feminine, moreover, Eichner comments that for Goethe the 1deal mother goddess who perfectly fitted the female role Ortner defines of contemplative purity" is always feminine while "the ideal of as "merciful dispenser of salvation." For the more secular nineteenth significant action is masculine." 44 Once again, therefore, it is just century, however, the eternal type of female purity was represented because women are defined as wholly passive, completely void of not by a madonna in heaven but by an angel in the house. Never­ generative power (like "Cyphers") that .they be~o.~e ~ur:!i~ou~ to theless, there is a clear line of literary descent from divine Virgin to male artists. For in the metaphysical emptmess their punty sigmfies domestic angel, passing through (among many others) Dante, Milton, they are, of course, self-less, with all the moral and psychological and Goethe. implications that word suggests. . . . . Like most Renaissance neo-Platonists, Dante claimed to know God Elaborating further on Goethe's eternal femmme, E1chner gives and His Virgin handmaid by knowing the Virgin's virgin attendant, an example of the culmination of Goethe's "chain of representatives 22 Toward a Feminist Poetics The Q.ueen's Lcoking Glass 23

of the 'noblest femininity'": Makarie, in the late novel Wil/u/m ordinariness of her life: she picks violets, loses her gloves, feeds her Mtistn-'s Travels. His description of her usefully summarizes the birds, waters her rose plot, and journeys to London on a train with her philosophical background of the angel in the house: father the Dean, carrying in her lap a volume of Petrarch borrowed She ... leads a life of almost pure contemplation .... in con­ from her lover but entirely ignorant that the book is, as he tells us, siderable isolation on a country estate ... a life without external "worth its weight in gold." In short, like Goethe's Makarie, Honoria events-a life whose story cannot be told as there is no story. has no story except a sort of anti-story of selfless innocence based on Her existence is not useless. On the contrary ... she shines like a the notion that "Man must be pleased; but him to please/ Is woman's beacon in a dark world, like a motionless lighthouse by which pleasure." 47 others, the travellers whose lives do have a story, can set their Significantly, when the young poet-lover first visits the Dean~ry course. When those involved in feeling and action turn to her where his Honoria awaits him like Sleeping Beauty or Snow Wh1te, in their need, they are never dismissed without advice and one of her sisters asks him if, since leaving Cambridge, he has "out­ consolation. She is an ideal, a model of selflessness and of purity grown" Kant and Goethe. But if his paean of praise to the Ewig­ ofheart.u Weibliche in rural England suggests that he has not, at any rate, outgrown the latter of these, that is because for Victorian men of Sht has no story Q[ her own but gives "advice and consolation" to others, letters Goethe represented not collegiate immaturity but moral listens, smiles, sympathizes: such characteristics show that Makarie maturity. Mter all, the climactic words of Sartor Resartus, that most is not only the descendent of Western culture's cloistered virgins but influential masterpiece of Victorian sagacity, were "Close thy Byron; also the direct ancestress of Coventry Patmore's angel in the house, open thy Goethe," 48 and though Carlyle was not specifically thinking the eponymous heroine of what may have been the middle nineteenth of what came to be called "the woman question," his canonization century's most popular book of poems. of Goethe meant, among other things, a new emphasis on the eternal Dedicated to "the memory of her by whom and for whom I became feminine, the angel woman Patmore describes in his verses, Aurora a poet," Patmore's The Angel in the House is a verse-sequence which Leigh perceives in her mother's picture, and Virginia Woolf shudders hymns the praises and narrates the courtship and marriage of to remember. Honoria, one of the three daughters of a country Dean, a girl whose Of course, from the eighteenth century on, conduct books for ladies unselfish grace, gentleness, simplicity, and nobility reveal that she is had proliferated, enjoining young girls to submissiveness, modesty, not only a pattern Victorian lady but almost literally an angel on self-lessness; reminding aU women that they should be angelic. There earth. Certainly her spirituality interprets the divine for her poet­ is a long and crowded road from The Booke Q[ Curtesye (I 4 77) to the husband, so that columns of "Dear Abby," but social historians have fully explored No happier post than this I ask, its part in the creation of those "eternal feminine" virtues of modesty, To live her laureate all my life. gracefulness, purity, delicacy, civility, compliancy, reticence, On wings of love uplifted free, chastity, affability, politeness-all of which are modes of man­ And by her gentleness made great, nerliness that contributed to Honoria's angelic innocence. Ladies I'll teach how noble man should be were assured by the writers of such conduct books that "There are To match with such a lovely mate.•& Rules for all our Actions, even down to Sleeping with a good Grace," and they were told that this good Grace was a woman's duty to her Honoria's essential virtue, in other words, is that her virtue makes her husband because "if Woman owes her Being to the Comfort and man "great." In and of herself, she is neither great nor extraordinary. Profit of man, 'tis highly reasonable that she should be careful and Indeed, Patmore adduces many details to stress the almost pathetic diligent to content and please him." 49 24 Toward a Feminist Poetics Tlu Quem's Looking Glass 25

The arts of pleasing men, in other words, are not only angelic of such death-angels as Harriet Beecher Stowe's little Eva or Dickens's characteristics; in more worldly terms, they are the proper acts of a little Nell resulted in a veritable "domestication of death," producing lady. "What shall I do to gratify myself or to be admired?" is not both a conventionalized iconography and a stylized hagiography of the question a lady asks on arising, declared Mrs. Sarah Ellis, Vic­ dying women and children.55 Like Dickens's dead-alive Florence torian England's foremost preceptress offemale morals and manners, Dombey, for instance, Louisa May Alcott's dying Beth March is a in 1844. No, because she is "the least engaged of any member of the household saint, and the deathbed at which she surrenders herself household," a woman of right feeling should devote herself to the to heaven is the ultimate shrine of the angel-woman's mysteries. At good ~f others.60 And she should do this silently, without calling the same time, moreover, the aesthetic cult of ladylike fragility and attentiOn to her exertions because "all that would tend to draw away delicate beauty-no doubt associated with the moral cult of the her thoughts from others and fix them on herself, ought to be avoided angel-woman-obliged "genteel" women to "kill" themselves (as as an evil to her."61 Similarly, John Ruskin affirmed in 1865 that Lederer observed) into art objects: slim, pale, passive beings whose the woman's "power is not for rule, not for battle, and her intellect "charms" eerily recalled the snowy, porcelain immobility of the is not for invention or creation, but for sweet orderings" of domes­ dead. Tight-lacing, fasting, vinegar-drinking, and similar cosmetic ticity. 52 Plainly, both writers meant that, enshrined within her home or dietary excesses were all parts of a physical regimen that helped a Victorian angel-woman should become her husband's holy refug; women either to feign morbid weakness or actually to "decline" from the blood and sweat that inevitably accompanies a "life of into real illness. Beth March's beautiful ladylike sister Amy is thus, significant action," as well as, in her "contemplative purity," a living in her artful way, as pale and frail as her consumptive sibling, and memento of the otherness of the divine. together these two heroines constitute complementary halves of the At times, however, in the severity of her selflessness, as well as in emblematic "beautiful woman" whose death, thought Edgar Allan 56 the extremity of her alienation from ordinary fleshly life, this nine­ Poe, "is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world." teenth-century angel-woman becomes not just a memento ofotherness Whether she becomes an objet d'art or a saint, however, it is the but actually a memento mori or, as Alexander Welsh has noted an surrender of her self-of her personal comfort, her personal desires, "Angel of Death." Discussing Dickens's heroines in particular 'and or both-that is the beautiful angel-woman's key act, while it is what he calls Victorian "angelology" in general, Welsh analyzes precisely this sacrifice which dooms her both to death and to heaven. ~~e .wa~ in which a .spiritualized heroine like Florence Dombey For to be selfless is not only to be noble, it is to be dead. A life that ass1sts m the translanon of the dying to a future state," not only has no story, like the life of Goethe's Makarie, is really a life of death, by officiating at the sickbed but also by maternally welcoming the a death-in-life. The ideal of "contemplative purity" evokes, finally, sufferer "from the other side of death." 53 But if the angel-woman in both heaven and the grave. To return to Aurora Leigh's catalogue, some curious way simultaneously inhabits both this world and the then-her vision of"Ghost, fiend, and angel, fairy, witch, and sprite" next? then there is a sense in which, besides ministering to the dying, in her mother's portrait- there is a sense in which as a celestial she 1s herself already dead. Welsh muses on "the apparent revers­ "angel" Aurora's mother is also a somewhat sinister ''ghost," because ibility of the heroine's role, whereby the acts of dying and of saving she wears the face of the spiritualized Victorian woman who, having someone from death seem confused," and he points out that Dickens died to her own desires, her own self, her own life, leads a posthumous actually describes Florence Dombey as having the unearthly serenity existence in her own lifetime. ofone who is dead. 64 A spiritual messenger, an interpreter of mysteries As Douglas r.eminds us too, though, the Victorian domestication to wondering and devoted men, the Ewig- W tibliche angel becomes, of death represents not just an acquiescence in death by the selfless, finally, a messenger of the mystical otherness of death. but also a secret striving for power by the powerless. "The tombstone," 57 As Ann Douglas has recently shown, the nineteenth-century cult she notes, "is the sacred emblem in the cult of the overlooked." 26 Toward a Fnninist Poetics The Quem's Looking Glass 27

Ex_orcised from pub~ic life, denied the pleasures (though not the (Although I'll never call her cheat) pams) of sensual extstence, the Victorian angel in the house was Lies far as Scotland from Cathay. 6& allowed to hold sway over at leas~ one realm beyond her own house­ hold: the kingdom of the dead. But if, as nurse and comforter Clearly, the poet is here acknowledging his beloved's potential for spirit-guide ~nd mystical messenger, a woman ruled the dying and what Austen's Captain Harville called "inconstancy" -that is, her the dead, rmght not even her admirers sometimes fear that besides stubborn autonomy and unknowable subjectivity, meaning the dying or easing death, she could bring death? As Welsh pu~ it, "the ineradicable selfishness that underlies even her angelic renunciation of self. power of an angel to save implies, even while it denies, the power of death." Spe~k_ing of ang~ic Agnes Wickfield (in David Copperfield), Similarly, exploring analogous tensions between flesh and spirit in yet another version of the angel-woman, Dante Gabriel Rossetti he adds a stmster but Witty question: "Who, in the language o: places his "Blessed Damozel" behind "golden barriers" in heaven, detective fiction, was the last person to see Dora Copperfield alive?" sa Neit~er W~ls~ nor Dic~ens does more than hint at the angel­ but then observes that she is still humanly embodied. The bars she woman s permc10us potential. But in this context a word to the wise leans on are oddly warm; her voice, her hair, her tears are weirdly is enough, for such a hint helps explain the fluid metamorphoses that real and sensual, perhaps to emphasize the impossibility of complete the figure of Auro~a's mother undergoes. Her images of "Ghost, spirituality for any woman. This "damozel's" life-in-death, at any fi:nd, and_ angel, fatry, witch and sprite," we begin to see, are inex­ rate, is still in some sense physical and therefore (paradoxically) ~nca?ly hn~ed, one to another, each to its opposite. Certainly, emblematic of mortality. But though Rossetti wrote "The Blessed tmpnsoned _m the coffinlike shape of a death angel, a woman might Damozel" in 1846, sixteen years before the suicide of his wife and long demorucally for escape. In addition, if as death angel the woman model Elizabeth Siddal, the secret anxieties such imagery expressed suggests a providentially selfless mother, delivering the male soul came to the surface long after Lizzie's death. In 1869, to retrieve a from one realm to another, the same woman's maternal power implies, poetry manuscript he had sentimentally buried with this beloved too, the fearful bondage of mortality into which every mother delivers woman whose face "fill(ed] his dreams"-buried as if woman and her childre?. Fina_lly, the fact that the angel woman manipulates artwork were necessarily inseparable-Rossetti had Lizzie's coffin her domesttcfmysttcal sphere in order to ensure the well-being of exhumed, and literary London buzzed with rumors that her hair those entrusted to her care reveals that she can manipulate; she can had "continued to grow after her death, to grow so long, so beautiful, 60 scheme; she can plot-stories as well as strategies. so luxuriantly as to fill the coffin with its gold!" As if symbolizing The Victorian angel's scheming, her mortal fleshliness, and her the indomitable earthliness that no woman, however angelic, could r~pressed (but therefore all the more frightening) capacity for explo­ entirely renounce, Lizzie Siddal Rossetti's hair leaps like a metaphor Slve rage are often subtly acknowledged, even in the most glowing for monstrous female sexual energies from the literal and figurative texts of male "angelographers." Patmore's Honoria for instance coffins in which her artist-husband enclosed her. To Rossetti, its r.roves to be considerably more duplicitous than at fi;st she seemed: assertive radiance made the dead Lizzie seem both terrifyingly To the ~weet folly of the dove," her poet-lover admits, "She joins physical and (iercely supernatural. "'Mid change the changeless night environeth, I Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death," t~e. cun~mg of _the ~nak;;" To be sure, the speaker shows that her 61 wihness ts exerctsed m a good" cause: "to rivet and exalt his love." he wrote. Nevertheless, Her mode of candour is deceit·, If we define a woman like Rossetti's dead wife as indomitably And what she thinks from what she'll say earthly yet somehow supernatural, we are defining her as a witch or 28 Toward a Feminist Poetics Tlu Q.ueen's Looking Glass 29

monster, a magical creature of the lower world who is a kind of Luckily, his Honoria has no such v1c1ous defects; her serpentine antithetical mirror image of an angel. As such, she still stands, in cunning, as we noted earlier, is concentrated entirely on pleasing Sherry Ortner's words, "both under and over (but really simply her lover. But repeatedly, throughout most male literature, a sweet outside of) the sphere of culture's hegemony." But now, as a repre­ heroine inside the house (like Honoria) is opposed to a vicious bitch sentative of otherness, she incarnates the damning otherness of the outside. flesh rather than the inspiring otherness of the spirit, expressing Behind Thackeray's angelically submissive Amelia Sedley, for what- to use Anne Finch's words-men consider her own "pre­ instance- an Honoria whose career is traced in gloomier detail than sumptuous" desires rather than the angelic humility and "dullness" that of Patmore's angel- lurks Vaniry Fair's stubbornly autonomous for which she was designed. Indeed, if we return to the literary Becky Sharp, an independent "charmer" whom the novelist at one definitions of "authority" with which we began this discussion, W•.! point actually describes as a monstrous and snaky sorceress: will see that the monster-woman, threatening to replace her angelic sister, embodies intransigent female autonomy and thus represents In describing this siren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajol­ both the author's power to allay "his" anxieties by calling their ing, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all around, source bad names (witch, bitch, fiend, monster) and, simultaneously, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the the mysterious power of the character who refuses to stay in her monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may textually ordained "place" and thus generates a story that "gets peep down under waves that are pretty transparent, and see it away" from its author. writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping Because, as Dorothy Dinnerstein has proposed, male anxieties amongst bones, or curling around corpses; but above the water about female autonomy pn:.bably go as deep as everyone's mother­ line, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and dominated infancy, patriarchal texts have traditionally suggested decorous .... 63 that every angelically selfless Snow White must be hunted, if not haunted, by a wickedly assertive Stepmother: for every glowing As this extraordinary passage suggests, the monster may not only portrait of submissive women enshrined in domesticity, there exists be concealed behind the angel, she may actually turn out to reside an equally important negative image that embodies the sacrilegious within (or in the lower half of) the angel. Thus, Thackeray implies, fiendishness of what William Blake called the "Female Will." Thus, every angel in the house-"proper, agreeable, and decorous," while male writers traditionally praise the simplicity of the dove, "coaxing and cajoling" hapless men- is really, perhaps, a monster, they invariably castigate the cunning of the serpent- at least when "diabolically hideous and slimy." that cunning is exercised in her own behalf. Similarly, assertiveness, "A woman in the shape of a monster," Adrienne Rich observes aggressiveness- all characteristics of a male life of "significant in "Planetarium," "a monster in the shape of a woman / the skies action" - are "monstrous" in women precisely because "unfeminine" are full ofthem."64 Because the skies are full of them, even if we focus and therefore unsuited to a gentle life of "contemplative purity." only on those female monsters who are directly related to Thackeray's Musing on "The Daughter of Eve," Patmore's poet-speaker remarks, serpentine siren, we will find that such monsters have long inhabite~ significantly, that male texts. Emblems of filthy materiality, committed only to the1r own private ends, these women are accidents of nature, deformities The woman's gentle mood o'erstept meant to repel, but in their very freakishness they possess unhealthy Withers my love, that lightly scans energies, powerful and dangerous arts. Moreover, to the extent that The rest, and does in her accept they incarnate male dread of women and, specifically, male scorn All her own faults, but none of man's.ez of female creativity, such characters have drastically affected the 30 Toward a Feminist Poetics The Q.ueen's Looking Glass 31

self-images of women writers, negatively reinforcing those messages Fielding's Mrs. Slipslop, and Smollett's Tabitha Bramble, they of submissiveness conveyed by their angelic sisters. implied that language itself was almost literally alien to the female The first book of Spenser's The Faerie Queene introduces a female tongue. In the mouths of women, vocabulary loses meaning, sentences monster who serves as a prototype of the entire Hne. Errour is half dissolve, literary messages are distorted or destroyed. At the same woman, half serpent, "Most lotbsom, filthie, foule, and full of vile time, more subtly but perhaps for that reason even more significantly, disdaine" (1.1:126). She breeds in a dark den where her young such authors devised elaborate anti-romances to show that the female suck on h~r p01sono~s dugs or creep back into her mouth at the sight "angel" was realiy a female "fiend," the ladylike paragon really an of bated hght, and m battle against the noble Red-crosse Knight unladylike monster. Thus while the "Bluestocking" Anne Finch ~~e spews out a flood of books and papers, frogs and toads. Symbol~ would find herself directly caricatured (as she was by Pope and Gay) lZlng th~ dangerous effect of misdirected and undigested learning, as a character afflicted with the "poetical Itch" like Phoebe Clinket her filthmess adumbrates that oftwo other powerful females in book 1 in Three Hours After Marriage, 66 she might well feel herself to be Duessa and Lucifera. But because these other women can creat~ indirectly but even more profoundly attacked by Johnson's famous false appearances to hide their vile natures, they are even more observation that a woman preacher was like a dog standing on its dangerous. hind legs, or by the suggestion-embedded in works by Swift, Pope, Like Errour, Duessa is deformed below the waist, as ifto foreshadow Gay, and others-that all women were inexorably and inescapably Lear's "But to the girdle do the Gods inherit, Beneath is all the fiend's." monstrous, in the flesh as well as in the spirit. Finally, in a comment When, like all witches, she must do penance at the time of the new like Horace Walpole's remark that Mary Wollstonecraft was "a moon by bathing with herbs traditionally used by such other witches hyena in petticoats," the two kinds of misogynistic attacks definitively as Scylla, Circe, and Medea, her "neather parts" are revealed as merged.67 "misshapen, monstruous. "Sb But significantly, Duessa deceives and It is significant, then, that jonathan Swift's disgust with the mon­ ensn~res men by assuming the shape of Una, the beautiful and angelic strous females who populate so many of his verses seems to have been her~me ~ho ~epresents Christianity, charity, dociHty. Similarly, caused specifically by the inexorable failure of female art. Like Luc1fera hves m what seems to be a lovely mansion, a cunningly disgusted Gulliver, who returns to England only to prefer the stable constructed House of Pride whose weak foundation and ruinous rear to the parlor, his horses to his wife, Swift projects his horror of time, ~uarters are carefully concealed. Both women use their arts of decep­ his dread of physicality, on to another stinking creature-the de­ tion t? entrap and destroy men, and the secret, shameful ugliness of generate woman. Probably the most famous instance of this projection both IS closely associated with their hidden genitals-that is with occurs in his so-called dirty poems. In these works, we peer behind their femaleness. . ' the facade of the angel woman to discover that, say, the idealized Descending from Patristic misogynists like Tertullian and St. "Caelia, Caelia, Caelia, shits !" We discover that the seemingly Augustine through Renaissance and Restoration literature-through unblemished Chloe must "either void or burst," and that the female Sidney's Cecropia, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth and his Goneril and "inner space" of the "Queen of Love" is like a foul chamber pot. 68 Regan, Milton's Sin (and even, as we shall see, his Eve)-the female Though some critics have suggested that the misogyny implied by monster populates the works of the satirists of the eighteenth century, Swift's characterizations of these women is merely ironic, what a company of male artists whose virulent visions must have been emerges from his most furious poems in this vein is a horror of female part~cularly alarming to feminine readers in an age when women flesh and a revulsion at the inability-the powerlessness-of female had JUSt begun to "attempt the pen.'' These authors attacked literary arts to redeem or to transform the flesh. Thus for Swift female sexuality wom~n on two fronts. First, and most obviously, through the con­ is consistently equated with degeneration, disease, and death, while struction of cartoon figures like Sheridan's Mrs. Malaprop and female arts are trivial attempts to forestall an inevitable end. I 32 Toward a Feminut Poetics The Q.ueen's Loolcing Glass 33

Significantly, as if defining the tradition of duplicity in which For the most part, eighteenth-century satirists limited their even Patmore's uxorious speaker placed his heroine, Swift devotes depiction of the female monster to low mimetic equivalents like many poems to an examination of the role deception plays in the Phoebe Clinket or Swift's corroding coquettes. But there were several creation of a saving but inadequate fiction of femininity. In "A important avatars of the monster woman who retained the allegorical Beautiful Young Nymph," a battered prostitute removes her wig, anatomy of their more fantastic precursors. In The Battle of the Books, her crystal eye, her teeth, and her padding at bedtime, so that the for instance, Swift's "Goddess Criticism" clearly symbolizes the next morning she must employ , all her "Arts" to reconstruct her demise of wit and learning. Devouring numberless volumes in a den "scatt. e r'd P arts . " 88 S uc h as they are, h owever, her arts only con- as dark as Errour's, she is surrounded by relatives like Ignorance, tribute to her own suffering or that of others, and the same thing Pride, Opinion, Noise, Impudence, and Pedantry, and she herself is true of Diana in "The Progress of Beauty," who awakes as a is as allegorically deformed as any of Spenser's females. mingled mass of dirt and sweat, with cracked lips, foul teeth, and The Goddess herself had claws like a Cat; her Head, and Ears, gummy eyes, to spend four hours artfully reconstructing herself. Because she is inexorably rotting away, however, Swift declares that and Voice, resembled those of an Ass; Her Teeth fallen out eventually .all forms will fail, for "Art no longer can prevaylf When before; Her Eyes turned inward, as if she lookt only upon the . Matenalls all are gone." 70 The strategies of ChJoe, Caelia, Herself; Her diet was the overflowing of her own Gall: Her Connna, and .Diana-artists manque all-have no success, Swift Spleen was so large, as to stand prominent like a Dug of the shows, except m temporarily staving off dissolution, for like Pope's first Rate, nor wanted Excrescencies in forms of Teats, at which "S_.... of Queens," Swift's females are composed of what Pope called a Crew of ugly Monsters were greedily sucking; and what is wonderful to conceive, the bulk of Spleen increased faster than "Matter too soft," and their arts are thus always inadequate. 71 73 No wonder, then, that the Augustan satirist attacks the female the Sucking could diminish it. scribbler so virulently, reinforcing Anne Finch's doleful sense that Like Spenser's Errour and Milton's Sin, Criticism is linked by her for a wo.m~~ to attempt the pen is monstrous and "presumptuous," processes of eternal breeding, eating, spewing, feeding, and rede­ for sh~ IS to be dull / Expected and dessigned." At least in part vouring to biological cycles all three poets view as destructive to reflecung male artists' anxieties about the adequacy of their own transcendent, intellectual life. More, since all the creations of each ar~, femal~ writers are maligned as failures in eighteenth-century monstrous mother are her excretions, and since all her excretions s~u~e ~rec1sely because they cannot transcend their female bodily are both her food and her weaponry, each mother forms with her hmnauons: they cannot conceive of themselves in any but reproductive brood a self-enclosed system, cannibalistic and solipsistic: the creativ­ terms. Poor Phoebe Clinket, for instance, is both a caricature of ity of the world made flesh is annihilating. At lhe same time, Swift's ~inch hersel~ a.nd .a protot~e of the female dunce who proves that spleen-producing and splenetic Goddess cannot be far removed from hterary creauvlty m women IS merely the result of sexual frustration. the Goddess of Spleen in Pope's The Rape of the Leek, and-because Lovingly nurturing the unworthy "issue" of her muse because it she is a mother Goddess-she also has much in common with the ~tlests to the "Fertility and Readiness" of her imagination, Phoebe Goddess of Dullness who appears in Pope's Dunciad. The parent of IS as sens~~ and ~ndis~riminate in her poetic strainings as Lady "Vapours and Female Wit," the "Hystertc or Poetic fit," the Queen Townley lS m her msat1able erotic longings.n Like mothers of ille­ of Spleen rules over all women between the ages of fifteen and fifty, gitimate or misshapen offspring, female writers are not producing and thus, as a sort of patroness of the female sexual cycle, she is ~hat they ~ught, the satirists declare, so that a loose lady novelist associated with the same anti-creation that characterizes Errour, ts, appropnately enough, the first prize in The Dunciad 's urinary Sin, and Criticism.74 Similarly, the Goddess of Dullness, a nursing contest, while a chamberpot is awarded to the runner-up. mother worshipped by a society of dunces, symbolizes the failure of 35 34 Toward a Feminist Poetics The Queen's Looking Glass

culture, the failure of art, and the death of the satirist. The huge Lady Macbeth, a disgusting goddess of Dullness, ~r {to name a few daughter of Chaos and Night, she rocks the laureate in her ample lap later witches) a murderous Lamia, a sinister Geraldme. Perhaps, then, while handing out rewards and intoxicating drinks to her dull sons. the "presumptuous" effort should not be made at all. Certainly the A Queen of Ooze, whose inertia comments on idealized Queens of story of Lilith, one more monster woman- indeed, according to Love, she nods and all of Nature falls asleep, its light destroyed by Hebrew mythology, both the first woman and the first mo?ster­ the stupor that spreads throughout the land in the milk of her specifically connects poetic presumption with madness, freak1shness, "kindness." 75 monstrosity. . .. In all these incarnations-from Errour to Dullness, from Goneril Created not from Adam's rib but, like him, from the dust, L1hth and Regan to Chloe and Caelia-the female monster is a striking was Adam's first wife, according to apocryphal Jewish lore. Beca~se illustration of Simone de Beauvoir's thesis that woman has been she considered herself his equal, she objected to lying beneath him, made to represent all of man's ambivalent feelings about his own so that when he tried to force her submission, she became enraged inability to control his own physical existence, his own birth and and, speaking the Ineffable Name, flew away to the ed~e oft_he ~ed death. As the Other, woman comes to represent the contingency of Sea to reside with demons. Threatened by God's angehc em1s:anes, life, life that is made to be destroyed. "It is the horror of his own told that she must return or daily lose a hundred ofher demon children carnal contingence," de Beauvoir notes, "which [man] projects to death, Lilith preferred punishment to patriarch~!. m~rriage,_ and upon (woman]."76 In addition, as Karen H omey and Dorothy she took her revenge against both God and Adam by mJurmg bab1es­ Dinnerstein have shown, male dread of women, and specifically the especially male babies, who were tra~itionally thou~ht to ~e mor_e infantile dread of maternal autonomy, has historically objectified vulnerable to her attacks. What her h1story suggests 1s that m pat~l­ itself in vilification of women, while male ambivalence about female archal culture, female speech and female "presu~ption".-that 1s, "charms" underlies the traditional images of such terrible sorceress­ angry revolt against male domination- are inextricably li~ked and goddesses as the Sphinx, Medusa, Circe, Kali, Delilah, and Salome, inevitably daemonic. Excluded from the human co~mumty, even all of whom possess duplicitous arts that allow them both to seduce from the semidivine communal chronicles of the B1ble, the figure and to steal male generative energy.11 of Lilith represents the price women hav_e ~een to~d the~ must pay The sexual nausea associated with all these monster women helps for attempting to define themselves. And 1t 1s a ternble pnce: cursed explain why so many real women have for so long expressed loathing both because she is a character who "got away" and because she of (or at least anxiety about) their own, inexorably female bodies. dared to usurp the essentially literary authority i~pli~d. by the ~ct The "killing" ofoneself into an art object- the pruning and preening, of naming, Lilith is locked into a vengeance (ch1ld-k!lling). which the mirror madness, and concern with odors and aging, with hair can only bring her more suffering {the killing of her own ch1ldren). which is invariably too curly or too lank, with bodies too thin or And even the nature of her one-woman revolution emphasizes her too thick- all this testifies to the efforts women have expended not helplessness and her isolation, for her protest takes the form o: a just trying to be angels but trying not to become female monsters. refusal and a departure, a flight of escape rather than an acuve More significantly for our purposes, however, the female freak is rebellion like, say, Satan's. As a paradigm of both the "w~tch" ~nd and has been a powerfully coercive and monitory image for women the "fiend" of Aurora Leigh's "Ghost, fiend, and angel, fa1ry, w1tch secretly desiring to attempt the pen, an image that helped enforce and sprite," Lilith reveals, then, just how difficult it is for _wo~en the injunctions to silence implicit also in the concept of the Ewig­ even to attempt the pen. And from George MacDo~~ld, the V1cto~1an W eibliche. Ifbecoming an author meant mistaking one's "sex and way," fantasist who portrayed her in his astonishing Lzltth as ~ ~arad1gm if it meant becoming an "unsexed" or perversely sexed female, then of the self-tormenting assertive woman, to Laura Ridmg, who it meant becoming a monster or freak, a vile Errour, a grotesque depicted her in "Eve's Side oflt" as an archetypal woman Creator, 36 Toward a Feminist Poetics The Queen's Looking Glass 37

the problem Lilith represents has been associated with the problems image in the crystal prison, as if the "fiend" of Aurora's mother's of female authorship and female authority. 78 Even if they had not portrait should plot to destroy the "angel" who is another one of studied her legend, literary women like Anne Finch, bemoaning the her selves. double bind in which the mutually dependent images of angel and The story begins in midwinter, with a Queen sitting and sewing, monster had left them, must have gotten the message Lilith incar­ framed by a window. As in so many fairy tales, she pricks her finger, nates: a life of feminine submission, of "contemplative purity," is a bleeds, and is thereby assumed into the cycle of sexuality William life of silence, a life that has no pen and no story, while a life of Blake called the realm of "generation," giving birth "soon after" female rebellion, of"significant action," is a life that must be silenced, to a daughter "as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the a life whose monstrous pen tells a terrible story. Either way, the wood of the window frame." 79 All the motifs introduced in this images on the surface of the looking glass, into which the female prefatory first paragraph- sewing, snow, blood, enclosure-are asso­ artist peers in search of her self, warn her that she is or must be a ciated with key themes in female lives (hence in fe!lJale writing), and "Cypher," framed and framed up, indited and indicted. they are thus themes we shall be studying throughout this book. But for our purposes here the tale's opening is merely prefatory. The real story begins when the Queen, having become a mother, As the legend of Lilith shows, and as psychoanalysts from Freud metamorphoses also into a witch- that is, into a wicked "step" and Jung onward have observed, myths and fairy tales often both mother:" ... when the child was born, the Queen died," and "After state and enforce culture's sentences with greater accuracy than more a year had passed the King took to himself another wife." sophisticated literary texts. If Lilith's story summarizes the genesis When we first encounter this "new" wife, she is framed in a magic of the female monster in a single useful parable, the Grimm tale of looking glass, just as her predecessor- that is, her earlier self-had "Little Snow White" dramatizes the essential but equivocal rela­ been framed in a window. To be caught and trapped in a mirror tionship between the angel-woman and the monster-woman, a rather than a window, however, is to be driven inward, obsessively relationship that is also implicit in Aurora Leigh's bewildered specu­ studying self-images as if seeking a viable self. The first Queen seems lations about her dead mother. "Little. Snow White," which Walt still to have had prospects; not yet fallen into sexuality, she looked Disney entitled "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," should really outward, if only upon the snow. The second Queen is doomed to the be called Snow White and Her Wicked Stepmother, for the central inward search that psychoanalysts like Bruno Bettelheim censoriously action of the tale-indeed, its only real action-arises from the define as "narcissism," 8° but which (as Mary Elizabeth Coleridge's relationship between these two women: the one fair, young, pale, "The Other Side of the Mirror" suggested} is necessitated by a state the other just as fair, but older, fiercer; the one a daughter, the from which all outward prospects have been removed. other a mother; the one sweet, ignorant, passive, the other both That outward prospects have been removed-or lost or dissolved artful and active; the one a sort of angel, the other an undeniable away-is suggested not only by the Queen's mirror obsession but witch. by the absence of the King from the story as it is related in the Grimm Significantly, the conflict between these two women is fought out version. The Queen's husband and Snow White's father (for whose largely in the transparent enclosures into which, like all the other attentions, according to Bettelheim, the two women are battling in images of women we have been discussing here, both have been a feminized Oedipal struggle) never actually appears in this story locked: a magic looking glass, an enchanted and enchanting glass at all, a fact that emphasizes the almost stifling intensity with which coffin. Here, wielding as weapons the tools patriarchy suggests that the tale concentrates on the conflict in the mirror between mother women use to kill themselves into art, the two women literally try and daughter, woman and woman, self and self. At the same time, to kill each other with art. Shadow fights shadow, image destroys though, there is clearly at least one way in which the King is present. 38 Toward a Fnninisl Poetics The Q.uem's Looking Glass 39

His, surely, is the voice of the looking glass, the patriarchal voice of wily, and self-absorbed as all artists traditionally are. On the ot?er judgment that rules the Queen's-and every woman's-self~evalua­ hand, in her absolute chastity, her frozen innocence, her sweet nullity, tion. He it is who decides, first, that his consort is "the fairest of all," Snow White represents precisely the ideal of "contemplative purity" and then, as she becomes maddened, rebellious, witchlike, that she we have already discussed, an ideal that could quite literally kill must be replaced by his angelically innocent and dutiful daughter, the Queen. An angel in the house of myth, Snow White is not only a a girl who is therefore defined as "more beautiful still" than the child but (as female angels always are) childlike, docile, submissive, Queen. To the extent, then, that the King, and only the King, the heroine of a life that has no story. But the Queen, adult and demonic, constituted the first Queen's prospects, he need no longer appear plainly wants a life of "significant action," by definition an " unfemi­ in the story because, having assimilated the meaning of her own nine" life of stories and story-telling. And therefore, to the extent sexuality (and having, thus, become the second Queen) the woman that Snow White, as her daughter, is a part of herself, she wants has internalized the King's rules: his voice resides now in her own to kill the Snow·White zn herself, the angel who would keep deeds and mirror, her own mind. dramas out of her own house. But if Snow White is "really" the daughter of the second as well The first death plot the Queen invents is a naively straight­ as of the first Queen (i.e., if the two Queens are identical), why does forward murder story: she commands one of her huntsmen to kill the Queen hate her so much? The traditional explanation-that Snow White. But, as Bruno Bettelheim has shown, the huntsman is the mother is as threatened by her daughter's "budding sexuality" really a surrogate for the King, a parental- or, more specifically, as the daughter is by the mother's "possession" of the father-is patriarchal-figure " who dominates, controls, and subdues wild helpful but does not seem entirely adequate, considering the depth ferocious beasts" and who thus " represents the subjugation of the and ferocity of the Queen's rage. It is true, of course, that in the animal, asocial, violent tendencies in man."81 In a sense, then, the patriarchal Kingdom of the text these women inhabit the Queen's Queen has foolishly asked her patriarchal master to act for her in life can be literally imperiled by her daughter's beauty, and true doing the subversive deed she wants to do in part to retain power (as we shall see throughout this study) that, given the female vulner~ over him and in part to steal his power from him. Obviously, he will ability such perils imply, female bonding is extraordinarily difficult not do this. As patriarchy's angelic daughter, Snow White is, after in patriarchy: women almost inevitably turn against women because all his child and he must save her, not kill her. Hence he kills a the voice of the looking glass sets them against each other. But, wild' boar in ' her stead, and brings its lung and liver to the Queen beyond all this, it seems as if there is a sense in which the intense as proof that he has murdered the child. Thinking that she is devour­ desperation with which the Queen enacts her rituals ofself-absorption ing her ice-pure enemy, therefore, the Queen consumes, instead, the causes (or is caused by) her hatred of Snow White. Innocent, passive, wild boar's organs; that is, symbolically speaking, she devours her and self-lessly free of the mirror madness that consumes the Queen, own beastly rage, and becomes (of course) even more enraged. Snow White represents the ideal of renunciation that the Queen When she learns that her first plot has failed, then, the Queen's has already renounced at the beginning of the story. Thus Snow story-telling becomes angrier as well as more inventive, more sophisti: White is destined to replace the Queen because the Queen hates her, cated, more subversive. Significantly, each of the three "tales" she rather than vice versa. The Queen's hatred of Snow White, in other tells- that is, each of the three plots she invents- depends on a words, exists before the looking glass has provided an obvious reason poisonous or parodic use of a distinctively female device as a murder for hatred. weapon, and in each case she reinforces the sardonic commentary For the Queen, as we come to see more clearly in the course of the on "femininity" that such weaponry makes by impersonating a story, is a plotter, a plot-maker, a schemer, a witch, an artist, an "wise" woman, a "good" mother, or, as Ellen Moers would put impersonator, a woman of almost infinite creative energy. witty, it, an "educating heroine." 82 As a "kind" old pedlar woman, she 40 Toward a Ftmmist Poetics Tlu Quem's Looking Glass 41

offers to lace Snow White " properly" for once-then suffocates her is the Queen's true daughter? The story does not, of course, answer with a very Victorian set of tight laces. As another wise old expert such questions, but it does seem to imply them, since its turning in female beauty, she promises to comb Snow White's hair "properly," point comes from Snow White's significant willingness to be tempted then assaults her with a poisonous comb. Finally, as a wholesome by the Queen's "gifts," despite the dwarves' admonitions. Indeed, farmer's wife, she gives Snow White a "very poisonous apple," which the only hint of self-interest that Snow White displays throughout she has made in " a quite secret, lonely room, where no one ever the whole story comes in her " narcissistic" desire for the stav-laces, came." The girl finally falls, killed, so it seems, by the female arts of the comb, and the apple that the disguised murderess offers. As cosmetology and cookery. Paradoxically, however, even though the Bettelheim remarks, this "suggests how close the stepmother's temp­ Queen has been using such feminine wiles as the sirens' comb and tations are to Snow White's inner desires." 83 Indeed, it suggests Eve's apple subversively, to destroy angelic Snow White so that she that, as we have already noted, the Queen and Snow White are in (the Queen) can assert and aggrandize herself, these arts have had some sense one: while the Queen struggles to free herself from the 0 .1 her daughter an opposite effect from those she intended. Strength­ passive Snow White in herself, Snow White must struggle to repress ening the chaste maiden in her passivity, they have made her into the assertive Queen in herself. That both women eat from the same precisely the eternally beautiful, inanimate objet d'art patriarchal deadly apple in the third temptation episode merely clarifies and at:sthetics want a girl to be. From the point of view of the mad, dramatizes this point. The Queen's lonely art has enabled her to self-assertive Queen, conventional female arts kill. But from the point contrive a two-faced fruit- one white and one red "cheek"- that of view of the docile and selfless princess, such arts, even while they represents her ambiguous relationship to this angelic girl who is kill, confer the only measure of power available to a woman in a both her daughter and her enemy, her self and her opposite. Her patriarchal culture. intention is that the girl will die of the apple's poisoned red half-red Certainly when the kindly huntsman-father saved her life by with her sexual energy, her assertive desire for deeds of blood and abandoning her in the forest at the edge of his kingdom, Snow White triumph-while she herself will be unharmed by the passivity of discovered her own powerlessness. Though she had been allowed to the white half. live because she was a " good" girl, she had to find her own devious But though at first this seems to have happened. the apple's effect way of resisting the onslaughts of the maddened Queen, both inside is, finally, of course, quite different. After the Queen's artfulness and outside her self. In this connection, the seven dwarves probably has killed Snow White into art, the girl becomes if anything even r<-present her own dwarfed powers, her stunted selfhood, for, as more dangerous to her " step" mother's autonomy than she was Bettelheim points out, they can do little to help save the girl from the before, because even more opposed to it in both mind and body. Q.ueen. At the same time, however, her life with them is an important For, dead and self-less in her glass coffin, she is an object, to be dis­ part of her education in submissive femininity, for in serving them played and desired, patriarchy's marble "opus," the decorative and she learns essential lessons of service, of selflessness, of domesticity. decorous Galatea with whom every ruler would like to grace his Finally, that at this point Snow White is a housekeeping angel in a parlor. T hus, when the Prince first sees Snow White in her coffin, 1iny house conveys the story's attitude toward "woman's world and be begs the dwarves to give "it" to him as a gift, "for I cannot live woman's work": the realm of domesticity is a miniaturized kingdom without seeing Snow White. I will honor and prize her as my dearest in which the best of women is not only like a dwarf but like a dwarf's possession". An "it," a possession, Snow White has become an servant. idealized image of herself, a woman in a portrait like Aurora Leigh's Does the irony and bitterness consequent upon such a perception mother, and as such she has definitively proven herself to be patri­ lead to Snow White's few small acts of disobedience? Or would archy's ideal woman, the perfect candidate for Queen. At this point, Snow White ultimately have rebelled anyway, precisely because she therefore, she regurgitates the poison apple (whose madness had '

42 Toward a Feminist Poetics The Queens's Looking Glass 43

stuck in her throat} and rises from her coffin. The fairest in the land, with a millstone.s• The male child's progress toward adulthood is she will marry the most powerful in the land ; bidden to their wedding, a growth toward both self-assertion and self-articulation, "The the egotistically assertive, plotting Queen will become a former Juniper Tree" implies, a development of the powers of speech. But Queen, dancing herself to death in red-hot iron shoes. the girl child must learn the arts of silence either as herself a silent What does the future hold for Snow White, however? When her image invented and defined by the magic looking glass of the male­ Prince becomes a King and she becomes a Queen, what will her authored text, or as a silent dancer of her own woes, a dancer who life be like? Trained to domesticity by her dwarf instructors, will enacts rather than articulates. From the abused Procne to the reclusive she sit in the window, gazing out on the wild forest of her past, and Lady of Shallott, therefore, women have been told that their art, sigh, and sew, and prick her finger, and conceive a child white as like the witch's dance in " Little Snow White," is an art of silence. snow, red as blood, black as ebony wood? Surely, fairest of them all, Procne must rec~rd her sufferings with what Geoffrey Hartman calls Snow White has exchanged one glass coffin for another, delivered "the voice of the shuttle" because when she was raped her tongue from the prison where the Queen put her only to be imprisoned in the was cut out.86 The Lady of Shallott must weave her story because looking glass from which the King's voice speaks daily. There is, she is imprisoned in a tower as adamantine as any glass coffin, doomed after all, no female model for her in this tale except the "good" to escape only through the self-annihilating madness of romantic (dead) mother and her living avatar the "bad" mother. And if Snow love (just as the Queen is doom<:d to escape only through the self­ White escaped her first glass coffin by her goodness, her passivity and annihilating madness of her death dance), and her last work of art docility, her only escape from her second glass coffin, the imprisoning is her own dead body floating downstream in a boat. And even mirror, must evidently be through "badness," through plots and when such maddened or grotesque female artists make sounds, they stories, duplicitous schemes, wild dreams, fierce fictions, mad imper­ are for the most part, say patriarchal theorists, absurd or grotesque sonations. The cycle of her fate seems inexorable. Renouncing or pitiful. Procne's sister Philomel, for instance, speaks with an "contemplative purity," she must now embark on that life of" signi­ unintelligible bird's voice (unlike the voice of the hero of "The ficant action" which, for a woman, is defined as a witch's life because Juniper Tree"). And when Gerard Manley Hopkins, with whom it is so monstrous, so unnatural. Grotesque as Errour, Duessa, we began this meditation on pens and penises and kings and queens, Lucifera, she will practice false arts in her secret, lonely room. Suicidal wrote of her in an epigram "On a Poetess," he wrote as follows: as Lilith and Medea, she will become a murderess bent on the self­ slaughter implicit in her murderous attempts against the life of her Miss M. 's a nightingale. 'Tis well own child. Finally, in fiery shoes that parody the costumes of femini­ Your simile I keep. nity as surely as the comb and stays she herself contrived, she will It is the way with Philomel do a silent terrible death-dance out of the story, the looking glass, To sing while others sleep.a• the transparent coffin of her own image. Her only deed, this death Even Matthew Arnold's more sympathetically conceived Philomel will imply, can be a deed of death, her only action the pernicious speaks "a wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain" that action of self-destruction. arises from the stirrings of a "bewildered brain." 87 In this connection, it seems especially significant that the Queen's Yet, as Mary Elizabeth Coleridge's yearning toward that sane dance of death is a silent one. In "The Juniper Tree," a version of and serious self concealed on the other side of the mirror suggested "Little Snow White" in which a boy's mother tries to kill him (for - and as Anne Finch's complaint and Anne Elliot's protest told us different reasons, of course) the dead boy is transformed not into too-women writers, longing to attempt the pen, have longed to a silent art object but into a furious golden bird who sings a song of escape from the many-faceted glass coffins of the patriarchal texts vengeance against his murderess and finally crushes her to death whose properties male authors insisted that they are. Reaching a 44 Toward a Feminist Poetics

hand to the stern, self-determining self behind the loolcing-glass portrait of her mother, reaching past those grotesque and obstructive images of "Ghost, fiend, and angel, fairy, witch, and sprite," Aurora Leigh, like all the women artists whose careers we will trace in this Infection in the Sentence: book, tries to excavate the real self buried beneath the "copy" selves. Similarly, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, staring into a mirror where The Woman Writer and the Anxiety her own mouth appears as a "hideous wound" bleeding "in silence and in secret," strives for a "voice to speak her dread." of Authorship In their attempts at the escape that the female pen offers from the prison of the male text, women like Aurora Leigh and Mary Elizabeth Coleridge begin, as we shall see, by alternately defining themselves as angel-women or as monster-women. Like Snow White and the wicked Queen, their earliest impulses, as we shall also see, are ambi­ The man who does not know sick women does not know women. -S. Weir Mitchell valent. Either they are inclined to immobilize themselves with suffocating tight-laces in the glass coffins of patriarchy, or they are I try to describe this long limitation, hoping that with such power tempted to destroy themselves by doing fiery and suicidal tarantellas as is now mine, and such use of language as is within that power, this will convince any one who cares about it that this "living" of out of the looking glass. Yet, despite the obstacles presented by those mine had been done untler a heavy handicap.... twin images of angel and monster, despite the fears of sterility and - Charlotte Perkins Gilman the anxieties of authorship from which women have suffered, genera­ A Word dropped careless on a Page tions of texts have been possible for female writers. By the end of May stimulate an eye the eighteenth century- and here is the most important phenomenon When folded in perpetual seam we will see throughout this volume-women were not only writing, The Wrinkled Maker lie they were conceiving fictional worlds in which patriarchal images Infection in the sentence breeds and conventions were severely, radically revised. And as self-conceiv­ We may inhale Despair ing women from Anne Finch and Anne Elliot to Emily Bronte and At distances of Centuries Emily Dickinson rose from the glass coffin of the male-authored text, From the Malaria- - Emily Dickinson as they exploded out of the Queen's loolcing glass, the old silent dance of death became a dance of triumph, a dance into speech, I stand in the ring a dance of authority. in the dead city and tie on the red shoes

They are not mine, they are my mother's, her mother's before, handed down like an heirloom but hidden like shameful letters. - Anne Sexton

What does it mean to be a woman writer in a culture whose funda­ mental definitions of literary authority are, as we have seen, both

45 Gary Gutting FOUCAULT A Very Short Introduction

1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Gary Gutting 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as a Very Short Introduction 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gutting, Gary. Foucault : a very short introduction / Gary Gutting. p. cm.—(A very short introduction) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Foucault, Michel. I. Title. II. Very short introductions. B2430.F724G86 2005 194—dc22 2004030575 ISBN 0-19-280557-6 (alk. paper) EAN 9780192805577 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall Chapter 9 Modern sex

The irony . . . is in having us believe that our ‘liberation’ is in the balance.

Because he was homosexual, writing a history of modern sexuality must have been a particularly personal enterprise for Foucault. His biographers suggest that as an adolescent he suffered from having sexual interests that French society of the 1940s and 1950s regarded mostly with shame or outrage. Even the generally tolerant milieu of the École normale was not entirely hospitable to homosexuality. Foucault makes it clear that one of his reasons for accepting a job in Sweden was the hope, not entirely fulfilled, of finding a more open sexual climate. Even though the details of Foucault’s sex life remain sketchy – and why shouldn’t they? – there is every reason to think that the experience of gay marginality was an important part of his life. On the other hand, he was as unwilling to accept the identity of ‘homosexual’ as he was any other. He seldom wrote or spoke on record as a ‘gay man’, and, when he did – for example, in a few interviews with gay publications – his attitude toward the activist gay community is more that of a sympathetic observer than a committed participant. He is most attracted by what he sees as recent gay explorations of new forms of human community and identity.

In any case, homosexuality was just one of many topics to be

91 covered by Foucault’s history of sexuality, which in addition to a volume called ‘Perverts’ would also have volumes on children, women, and married couples. Moreover, his general introduction to the project, the only volume of the series actually published, shows that, as in Discipline and Punish, his treatment would expand beyond marginalized groups to everyone in modern society. In fact, it seems clear that, from the beginning, Foucault’s work on sexuality was developing a dimension beyond that of power relations. It was becoming a history of the formation of subjects in not only a political but also a psychological and ethical sense.

The starting-point is, however, still Foucault’s conception of modern power, which is most explicitly set out in volume one of the History of Sexuality. As a result, Foucault’s initial treatment of sexuality is a fairly straightforward extension of the genealogical method of Discipline and Punish. The method is applied to the various modern bodies of knowledge about sexuality (‘sciences of sexuality’) in order to show their intimate association with the Foucault power structures of modern society. The focus of this aspect of Foucault’s discussion is what he calls the ‘repressive hypothesis’. This is the common assumption that the primary attitude of modern society toward sex (beginning in the 18th century, reaching a peak in the Victorian Age, and still exerting strong influence today) was negative; that, except for the closely delimited sphere of monogamous marriage, sexuality was opposed, silenced, and, as far as possible, eliminated.

Foucault does not deny the fact of repression. The Victorian age covered bosoms, censored literature, and waged vigorous campaigns against masturbation. But he denies that modern power is primarily exercised through repression and that opposition to repression is an effective way of resisting modern power. Rather, he thinks that modern power created new forms of sexuality by inventing discourses about it. For example, although same-sex relations have occurred throughout human history, the

92 homosexual as a distinct category, with defining psychological, physiological, and perhaps even genetic characteristics, was created by the power/knowledge system of the modern sciences of sexuality.

According to Foucault, sexual repression is a superficial phenomenon; far more significant is the ‘veritable discursive explosion’ (HS, 17) of talk about sex that began in the 17th century, with the Counter-Reformation’s legislation on the practice of confession. Penitents were required to ‘examine their consciences’ with a thoroughness and nuance previously unheard of. It was not enough to say ‘I slept with a woman other than my wife’; you had to say how many times, just what sorts of acts were involved, whether the woman was herself married. Nor was it enough to report overt actions. Equally important were thoughts and desires, even if not carried out. But even here it was not enough to say, ‘I thought about sleeping with a woman other than my wife’. You also had to sex Modern determine if you had dwelt on the thought, found enjoyment in it rather than rejecting it immediately; and, if you had entertained it, whether this was done with a certain inadvertence or with ‘full consent of the will’. All these factors were needed for the confessor to determine the degree of guilt (for example, mortal versus venial sin), impose an appropriate penance, and give advice for moral improvement. The result for penitents was an ever deeper and more precise self-knowledge, the outcome of a ‘hermeneutics of the self’ that revealed as fully as possible their inner sexual natures. Foucault’s suggestion, however, is that this nature is not so much discovered as constituted by the required self-examination. What I am sexually depends on the categories I am required to use in making my confession.

A large part of the history of modern sexuality is the secular adaptation and expansion of these religious techniques of self- knowledge. Confession may no longer be made to a priest but it is surely made to one’s doctor, psychiatrist, best friend, or, at least, to oneself. And the categories that define the possibilities of one’s

93 sexual nature are not self-chosen but accepted on the authority of ‘experts’ in the new modern sciences of sexuality: the Freuds, the Kraft-Ebbings, the Havelock Ellises, the Margaret Meads. Such experts present as discoveries about human nature what are actually just new social norms for behaviour.

Of course, there is a distinction between sexuality as a social construct and sex as a biological reality. Foucault does not deny that there are, for example, undeniable physiological facts about human reproduction. But he maintains that once we move from sheer biology to the inevitably hermeneutic and normative concepts of psychology, anthropology, etc., the distinction breaks down. The Oedipal complex, for example, is tied to assumptions about the meaning and value of the bourgeois family; it is not just another fact, like the physiology of conception. Even what seem to be simple biological facts, for example, the distinction of male and female, can turn out to have normative social significance, as is demonstrated by the case of Herculine Barbin, a 19th-century hermaphrodite, who was raised as a female but, in her twenties, came under the Foucault scrutiny of doctors who decided that she was in fact a man and forced her to live as one. Foucault published the poignant memoirs Barbin wrote before committing suicide at the age of thirty.

Given his critique of the repressive hypothesis, Foucault is able to develop a history of sexuality that often parallels his history of the prison. Just as the modern sciences of criminology define categories of social dysfunction (juvenile delinquent, kleptomaniac, drug addict, serial killer, etc.) that are simultaneously sources of knowledge and of control regarding their ‘subjects’, so the modern sciences of sexuality define categories of sexual dysfunction (homosexual, nymphomaniac, fetishist, etc.) that have a parallel role as power/knowledge. Foucault cites the case of Jouy, a slightly retarded 19th-century French peasant, who would occasionally entice young girls of his village into what Foucault describes as ‘harmless embraces’. No doubt such things had gone on in French villages for centuries, but someone reported Jouy to the authorities

94 who brought down upon him the full brunt of the new science of sexuality. After detailed legal and medical examinations, he was found guilty of no crimes but was nonetheless confined to a hospital for the rest of his life as a ‘pure object of medicine and knowledge’ (HS, 32). Many of us today will be shocked at Foucault’s insouciance over what we might well judge sexual molestation, but Foucault would no doubt see our reaction as itself a sign of the effects of the modern power/knowledge system.

Three of Foucault’s six planned volumes were to treat specific marginalized groups: children, as the object of the campaign to suppress masturbation (The Children’s Crusade); women as subjects of the sexually based disorder of hysteria (The Hysterical Woman); and homosexuals and other groups judged sexually ‘abnormal’ (Perverts). All of these, like the criminals of Discipline and Punish, were constituted and controlled by hierarchical observation and normalizing judgements. Further, as in the case sex Modern of criminality, there was no real possibility of eliminating or even substantially reducing the targeted behaviours, so the de facto function of the power apparatus was simply to control segments of the population. A fourth projected volume was The Malthusian Couple, where Foucault’s topic would have been various power structures designed to limit the population and improve its quality. This, again as in Discipline and Punish, is readily seen as an extension of disciplinary power to non-marginal groups.

In the concluding chapter of the introduction to The History of Sexuality, Foucault seems to be moving beyond sexuality as such and develops a notion of biopower, which embraces all the forms of modern power directed toward us as living beings, that is, as subject to standards of not just sexual but biological normality. Biopower is concerned with the ‘task of administering life’, a process that operates on two levels. On the level of individuals, there is an ‘anatomo-politics of the human body’; on the level of social groups, there is a ‘bio-politics of populations’ (HS, 139. The first level implicitly complements the primarily epistemological

95 treatment of medicine in The Birth of the Clinic, making explicit the political significance (in a broad sense that includes the social and the economic) of the medical norms defining a healthy individual. So, for example, the modern medical notion of obesity corresponds to the marginalized social class of ‘fat people’, and modern techniques of drug treatments of illness are inextricably tied to the economics of the pharmaceutical industry. The second level concerns the modern focus on a nation’s entire population as a resource that must be protected, supervised, and improved. Thus, capitalism requires universal medical care and education to ensure an adequate workforce; racist ideologies call for eugenic measures to protect the purity of the population ‘stock’; and military planners develop the concept of ‘total war’, as a battle between not just armies but entire populations.

We see, then, that Foucault’s project of a history of modern sexuality was, even as he began it, expanding to a history of modern biopower. And from the late 1970s on, he took up the themes of such a history. So, for example, he returned to issues in the history Foucault of medicine and psychiatry, now from the broader perspective of his new view of power. Also, he began studying what he called ‘governmentality’: the art, developed from medieval pastoral models, of rulers’ care for the populations under their control.

But even more significant was another direction of expansion, toward what Foucault came to call a ‘history of the subject’. This had already begun to emerge in Discipline and Punish, where Foucault occasionally noted how the objects of disciplinary control could themselves internalize the norms whereby they were controlled and so become monitors of their own behaviour. In the context of sexuality, this phenomenon becomes central, since individuals are supposed to discern their own fundamental nature as sexual beings and, on the basis of this self-knowledge, transform their lives. As a result, we are controlled not only as objects of disciplines that have expert knowledge of us; we are also controlled as self-scrutinizing and self-forming subjects of our own knowledge.

96 13. Foucault in his apartment in Paris, 1978 This new perspective leads Foucault to question the modern ideal of sexual liberation. I discover my deep sexual nature through self-scrutiny and come to express this nature by overcoming various hang-ups and neuroses. But am I really freeing myself, or am I just reshaping my life in accord with a new set of norms? Isn’t promiscuity as demanding an ideal as monogamy, the imperative to be sexually adventurous as burdensome as a prudish limitation to the missionary position? The magazines, self-help books, and sex manuals that guide us to a life of liberated sexuality seem to induce in us as much insecurity and fear about our sexual attractiveness and ability to perform as sermons and tracts did in our grandparents about the dangers of sexual indulgence. More importantly, is my acceptance of the demands of liberation any more an expression of my ‘true nature’ than were our grandparents’ acceptance of the demands of traditional morality? Foucault suggests that, in both cases, the acceptance may merely be an internalization of external norms. The irony of our endless preoccupation with our sexuality, Foucault says, is that we think that it has something to do with liberation (HS, 159). Foucault

Even more importantly, Foucault’s new perspective led him to the view that his study of sexuality was really part of an effort to understand the process whereby individuals become subjects. He was, he concluded, writing not so much a history of sexuality as a history of the subject. This transition arose from the fact that he had found sexuality to be an integral part of our identity as selves or subjects. To say that I am homosexual or that I am obsessed with Albertine is to say something central about what I am in the concreteness of my subjectivity. Here Foucault seems to return to the standpoint of individual consciousness, which he earlier rejected in his choice of the philosophy of the concept over the philosophy of experience. I, however, would suggest that he never really left this standpoint, but instead rejected transcendental readings of subjectivity that ignored its fundamentally historical nature. In any case, he now felt the ability and the need to give an account of the historical process whereby we become subjects. The

98 question is not how consciousness emerges from unconscious matter but how a conscious being assumes a particular identity, that is, comes to think of itself as directed by a given set of ethical norms, which give its existence a specific meaning and purpose.

In The History of Sexuality, Foucault began looking at the way the modern consciousness of an ethical self emerged through the secularization of Christianity’s hermeneutics of the self (as in the confessional practices we discussed above). His original plan was to develop this theme at length in a separate volume on medieval Christian views of sexuality, which he called Les Avoux de la chair. (This was to be the second volume of the history of sexuality, followed by the four volumes, on children, women, perverts, and couples.) Foucault says he finished a draft of this volume but was not satisfied with what he had written and set it aside. Although the draft apparently does still exist, it has never been published

(Foucault’s family have insisted on following his terse injunction: sex Modern ‘No posthumous publications.’). Nor is the draft available in the Foucault Archives in Paris; very few people have even seen it and there are no detailed accounts of its content. (Some who have seen it say it isn’t really a complete draft, as Foucault suggested.)

In any case, as Foucault reflected further on his project, he decided that he needed to begin not with the Middle Ages but with ancient Greek and Roman views on sexuality and the self. He had concluded that to properly understand the Christian hermeneutic view of the self, he had to trace its origins and differences from ancient ideas. He began brushing up his school-boy Greek and Latin and had many discussions with two of his friends and colleagues in the Collège de France: Paul Veyne, a Roman historian, and Pierre Hadot, an historian of ancient philosophy. This major redirection, combined with ill health (which turned out to be the AIDS from which Foucault eventually died) seriously delayed the project. It was only in 1984, just before his death, that Foucault was able to publish two volumes on the ancient world: The Use of Pleasure, which discussed Greek texts of the 4th century bc, and

99 The Care of the Self, which covered Greek and Roman texts from the 1st century bc to the 1st century ad.

Although these books were titled Volume II and Volume III of Foucault’s History of Sexuality, there is no sense in which Volume I, which we have been discussing here, can be regarded as an introduction to them. Put roughly, the project Volume I is introducing is one in which modern sexuality would be studied as an example of bio-power: biological (in a broad sense) knowledge as a basis for socio-political control of individuals and groups. This is a project Foucault never carried out, although there are some elements of it dispersed in his writings before and after Volume I. Volumes II and III are part of a study of ancient sexuality as an example of the ethical formation of the self. It has no overlap with the earlier interest in bio-power, although there is a connection through the shared topic of the Christian hermeneutics of the self. It would have been less misleading if Foucault had not presented theses two books as continuations of his original history of sexuality. He may have envisaged some broader project that would have Foucault approached sexuality through both bio-power and the formation of the self. But at the end of his life he seems to have rather been moving away from the history of sexuality. His new direction, as we shall see, connects the formation of the subject not to sexuality but to what he came to call ‘games of truth’.

100 Judith Butler, from “Critically Queer”, GLQ: A Journal in Gay and Lesbian Studies, 1: 1, 1993, pp. 17-32.

[…]

Performative acts are forms of authoritative speech: most performatives, for instance, are statements which, in the uttering, also perform a certain action and exercise a binding power. Implicated in a network of authorization and punishment, performatives tend to include legal sentences, baptisms, inaugurations, declarations of ownership, statements that not only perform an action, but confer a binding power on the action performed. The power of discourse to produce that which it names is thus essentially linked with the question of performativity. The performative is thus one domain in which power acts as discourse.

Importantly, however, there is no power, construed as a subject, that acts, but only a reiterated acting that is power in its persistence and instability. This is less an “act,” singular and deliberate, than a nexus of power and discourse that repeats or mimes the discursive gestures of power. Hence, the judge who authorizes and installs the situation he names (we shall call him “he,” figuring this model of authority as masculinist) invariably cites the law that he applies, and it is the power of this citation that gives the performative its binding or conferring power. And though it may appear that the binding power of his words is derived from the force of his will or from a prior authority, the opposite is more true: it is through the citation of the law that the figure of the judge’s “will” is produced and that the “priority” of textual authority is established. Indeed, it is through the invocation of convention that the speech act of the judge derives its binding power; that binding power is to be found neither in the subject of the judge nor in his will, but in the citational legacy by which a contemporary “act” emerges in the context of a chain of binding conventions.

Where there is an “I” who utters or speaks and thereby produces an effect in discourse, there is first a discourse which precedes and enables that “I” and forms in language the constraining trajectory of its will. Thus there is no “I” who stands behind discourse and executes its volition or will through discourse. On the contrary, the “I” only comes into being through being called, named, interpellated (to use the Althusserian term), and this discursive constitution takes place prior to the “I”; it is the transitive invocation of the “I.” Indeed, I can only say “I” to the extent that I have first been addressed, and that address has mobilized my place in speech; paradoxically, the discursive condition of social recognition precedes and conditions the formation of the subject: recognition is not conferred on a subject, but forms that subject. Further, the impossibility of a full recognition, that is, of ever fully inhabiting the name by which one’s social identity is inaugurated and mobilized, implies the instability and incompleteness of subject-formation. The “I” is thus a citation of the place of the “I” in speech, where that place has a certain priority and anonymity with respect to the life it animates: it is the historically revisable possibility of a name that precedes and exceeds me, but without which I cannot speak.

[…]

How, if at all, is the notion of discursive resignification linked to the notion of gender parody or impersonation? If gender is a mimetic effect, is it therefore a choice or a dispensable artifice? If not, how did this reading of Gender Trouble emerge? There are at least two reasons for the misapprehension, one which I myself produced by citing drag as an example of performativity (taken then, by some, to be exemplary, that is, the example of performativity), and another which has to do with the political needs of a growing queer movement in which the publicization of theatrical agency has become quite central.

The misapprehension about gender performativity is this: that gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as ·one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a “one” who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today. This is a voluntarist account of gender which presumes a subject, intact, prior to its gendering. The sense of gender performativity that I meant to convey is something quite different.

Gender is performative insofar as it is the effect of a regulatory regime of gender differences in which genders are divided and hierarchized under constraint. Social constraints, taboos, prohibitions, threats of punishment operate in the ritualized repetition of norms, and this repetition constitutes the temporalized scene of gender construction and destabilization. There is no subject who precedes or enacts this repetition of norms. To the extent that this repetition creates an effect of gender uniformity, a stable effect of masculinity or femininity, it produces and destabilizes the notion of the subject as well, for the subject only comes into intelligibility through the matrix of gender. Indeed, one might construe repetition as precisely that which undermines the conceit of voluntarist mastery designated by the subject in language.

There is no subject who is “free” to stand outside these norms or to negotiate them at a distance; on the contrary, the subject is retroactively produced by these norms in their repetition, precisely as their effect. What we might call “agency” or “freedom” or “possibility” is always a specific political prerogative that is produced by the gaps opened up in regulatory norms, in the interpellating work of such norms, in the process of their self- repetition. Freedom, possibility, agency do not have an abstract or pre-social status, but are always negotiated within a matrix of power.

Gender performativity is not a matter of choosing which gender one will be today. Performativity is a matter of reiterating or repeating the norms by which one is constituted: it is not a radical fabrication of a gendered self. It is a compulsory repetition of prior and subjectivating norms, ones which cannot be thrown off at will, but which work, animate, and constrain the gendered subject, and which are also the resources from which resistance, subversion, displacement are to be forged. The practice by which gendering occurs, the embodying of norms, is a compulsory practice, a forcible production, but not for that reason fully determining. To the extent that gender is an assignment, it is an assignment which is never quite carried out according to expectation, whose addressee never quite inhabits the ideal s/he is compelled to approximate.

[…]

It may seem, however, that there is a difference between the embodying or performing of gender norms and the performative use of language. Are these two different senses of “performativity,” or do they converge as modes of citationality in which the compulsory character of certain social imperatives becomes subject to a more promising deregulation? Gender norms operate by requiring the embodiment of certain ideals of femininity and masculinity, ones which are almost always related to the idealization of the heterosexual bond. In this sense, the initiatory performative, “It’s a girl!”, anticipates the eventual arrival of the sanction, “I pronounce you man and wife.” Hence, also, the peculiar pleasure of the cartoon strip in which the infant is first interpellated into discourse with “It’s a lesbian!” Far from an essentialist joke, the queer appropriation of the performative mimes and exposes both the binding power of the heterosexualizing law and its expropriability.

To the extent that the naming of the “girl” is transitive, that is, initiates the process by which a certain “girling” is compelled, the term or, rather, its symbolic power, governs the formation of a corporeally enacted femininity that never fully approximates the norm. This is a “girl,” however, who is compelled to “cite” the norm in order to qualify and remain a viable subject. Femininity is thus not the product of a choice, but the forcible citation of a norm, one whose complex historicity is indissociable from relations of discipline, regulation, punishment. Indeed, there is no “one” who takes on a gender norm. On the contrary, this citation of the gender norm is necessary in order to qualify as a “one,” to become viable as a “one,” where subject-formation is dependent on the prior operation of legitimating gender norms.

It is in terms of a norm that compels a certain “citation” in order for a viable subject to be produced that the notion of gender performativity calls to he rethought. And precisely in relation to such a compulsory citationality that the theatricality of gender is also to be explained. Theatricality need not be conflated with self-display or self-creation. Within queer politics, indeed, within the very signification that is “queer,” we read a resignifying practice in which the desanctioning power of the name “queer” is reversed to sanction a contestation of the terms of sexual legitimacy. Paradoxically, but also with great promise, the subject who is “queered” into public discourse through homophobic interpellations of various kinds takes up or cites that very term as the discursive basis for an opposition. This kind of citation will emerge as theatrical to the extent that it mimes and renders hyperbolic the discursive convention that it also reverses. The hyperbolic gesture is crucial to the exposure of the homophobic “law” which can no longer control the terms of its own abjecting strategies.

[…]