What would be best for Stevie, Betsy thought, would be a nice liberal boarding school with high academic standards, somewhere in the real country — say some place like Putney in Vermont, where Betsy had gone herself. There was sometimes room at midterm for new students, and Stevie would probably adore Vermont. After Colorado he’d want to hike and camp out and ski. Betsy thought it was a great idea.
“Well, I think it’s a terrible idea,” Polly said, trying to remain calm. “Stevie’s just been away from me for four months; I’m not going to send him off again, even if I could afford it, which I can’t.” She looked toward Jeanne for support, but Jeanne only went on stirring the hollandaise.
“My mother was exactly like you,” Betsy said in her whining, stubborn way, starting to scrape at another potato. “She didn’t want me to go away to school. But I had a really great time at Putney. I think maybe you’re putting your own needs ahead of Stevie’s, and besides —”
“I am not —” Polly began, seething.
“— besides, it could even be emotionally damaging if you insist on keeping him too close to you; that’s what Jeanne and I think.”
“I don’t see why it should do Stevie any damage to be close to me,” Polly said, feeling angry and betrayed. “He’s been close to me for fourteen years.” Ignoring Betsy, she stared at Jeanne. “Is that really what you think?”
“No, of course not.” Jeanne moved the double boiler off the burner and turned around, wiping her hands on her flowered apron. “Betsy’s got it quite wrong,” she said in an easy, soothing voice. “Of course it won’t hurt Stevie to stay here, because you’re not a neurotic, anxious mother like hers.” She smiled at them both. “Stevie doesn’t need to get away from you, I told her so already. And naturally you want to keep him with you as long as you can.”
“Right,” Polly said with satisfaction, and gave Betsy a scornful look. You see, you stupid preppie, she thought.
“I know you love Stevie and want what’s best for him; and so do I,” Jeanne went on, smiling fondly. “But I don’t see why you can’t ask him to move into the spare room, just for a little while. And really I don’t imagine it would make all that much difference to him. He might even prefer it, because he’d have his own bathroom.”
“But —” Polly began, choking up again. The spare bathroom had been designed for a maid back when maids would put up with anything: it was cramped, unheated, and disagreeable, with cheap rusted fixtures. The truncated and stained tub, with its cargo of discarded canvases, hadn’t been used since Polly moved in fourteen years ago. “I think he’d hate it,” she said, trying hard to speak evenly. “Having your own room is important for a kid; much more than for someone like you or me.”
“You may have a point,” Jeanne conceded. “Well, maybe we should move into your room instead. It’s not as big as Stevie’s, but it’s large enough for two people.”
“I didn’t meant to suggest —” Was Jeanne really proposing to turn her out of her own room? Polly looked at her friend as she stood by the stove. Everything about her was familiar, from her soft pale curls, caught back for cooking with a bit of rose-colored ribbon, to her scuffed black ballet slippers; but Polly felt as if she had never seen her before. “Anyhow, there’s not enough space in this apartment for four people,” she said. “It’s too crowded already with three.”
“It is kind of small —” Betsy began, but neither of them paid any attention to her.
“Now Polly, really,” Jeanne murmured, smiling. “You mustn’t exaggerate. This apartment is twice as big as the house I grew up in, and there were four of us there. I think you’re being just a little bit selfish, you know.”
“Well, I think you’re being a little bit selfish,” Polly said, beginning to lose control.
“I only suggested —” Jeanne began, but Polly rushed on:
“— And if you want to know, I don’t think you want what’s best for Stevie at all. I think you want what’s best for Jeanne and Betsy.”
“Oh, Polly!” her friend said in a soft shaky overdramatic voice. “Don’t talk that way!”
But the storm of flies had boiled up into Polly’s head. “Don’t tell me how to talk, okay?” she shouted.
Jeanne flinched as if she had been struck, but did not reply. She bent over the stove, her pink lips trembling, her eyes blinking with unshed tears, while Betsy stared at Polly accusingly.
“I’m sorry,” Polly said finally. “I didn’t mean — I just meant — I’m upset, that’s all.”
“That’s all right,” Jeanne murmured, looking up with a wan expression. “I know it’s an emotional issue for you.”
“Yeah,” Polly agreed.
“Kiss and make up?” Jeanne suggested, smiling.
“All right,” Polly said.
Jeanne wiped her hands on her apron, crossed the kitchen, and gave Polly a warm hug. “That’s better,” she said, laughing a little. “Isn’t it?”
“Much better,” she said, returning the embrace.
“Me, too,” Betsy demanded, dropping the potato she was peeling and clumping over to them. Polly pulled back; no way was she going to get into a three-way hug with Betsy.
“And think over what I’ve said, won’t you please?” Jeanne added over Betsy’s shoulder. “I’m sure Stevie wouldn’t mind switching rooms, even if you do.”
“Okay,” Polly agreed sulkily.
A bright, diffuse smile broke over her friend’s face. Polly smiled back, but as Jeanne returned to her cooking and she to her desk, her mind was troubled. Am I really being selfish? she thought. Or is it Jeanne who’s selfish? And not only selfish, but devious and insincere.
She scowled at her typewriter. To suspect another woman — especially Jeanne — of the faults that men had attributed to the sex for centuries was awful; blatantly reactionary. But the idea was there in her head, refusing to leave. She thought that Jeanne wasn’t always frank and direct; that in fact Jeanne sometimes treated her the way women were traditionally supposed to treat men: with charm and flattery and guile. The way she had once advised Polly to treat the men she was going to interview for her book.
She turned and regarded her friend, whose soft ponytail of hair and ruffled calico apron seemed almost a deliberate parody of the female role. How deft and delicate her gestures were as she stirred the thickening sauce, how pretty her small plump hands with their carefully manicured shell-pink nails!
And now it occurred to Polly that the scene in the apartment was like a caricature of a traditional marriage. She was the cross husband, in worn jeans and baggy sweater, owner of the home and its main economic support, working late. The tactful, charming, manipulative wife, in a flowered apron, was making supper, and the spoiled stepdaughter was pretending to help.
Jeanne cares more about Betsy than she does about me, Polly said to herself with an empty, sinking feeling. And she doesn’t love Stevie at all. Her sensible arguments and her teary concern were a sham; what she really wants is for me to shove him out of their way into the maid’s room, or move there myself. Well, fuck it. I’m not going to.
16
ON A DULL CLOUDY winter day, Polly Alter was trudging down Central Park West from her apartment to Jacky Herbert’s. Though it was only four in the afternoon, she was exhausted. Yesterday Stevie had come home, and Jeanne and Betsy had moved out, but at a heavy cost.
It had been a week of scenes and silences, of hysterical accusations and failed compromises. Polly had eventually told Jeanne that she could stay on in the spare room for as long as she liked. But when Betsy heard about this she went into a whiny, jealous panic. Polly was trying to separate them, she cried; she had no place to go — she couldn’t possibly stay at Ida’s by herself — Jeanne didn’t love her anymore — nobody wanted her — she would be so lonely and miserable she’d have to go back to her husband. After twenty-four hours of these desperate, contradictory claims, Jeanne capitulated. But Polly stood firm, determined that whether Jeanne stayed or not, Betsy should go.