"Somebody's coming for you." She arranges her jacket, her valise, and her pocketbook, and turns off the light, shutting the door behind her (it latches itself). If only (she thinks) he'll come and show me to myself.
I've been waiting for you so long. How much longer must I wait?
Nights and nights alone. ("You can't," says the stairwell. "You can't," says the street.) A fragment of old song drifts through her mind and lingers behind her in the stairwell, her thoughts lingering there, too, wishing that she could be a mermaid and float instead of walk, that she were someone else and so could watch herself coming down the stairs, the beautiful girl who composes everything around her to harmony: Somebody lovely has just passed by.
II
I live between worlds. Half the time I like doing housework, I care a lot about how I look, I warm up to men and flirt beautifully (I mean I really admire them, though I'd die before I took the initiative; that's men's business), I don't press my point in conversations, and I enjoy cooking. I like to do things for other people, especially male people. I sleep well, wake up on the dot, and don't dream. There's only one thing wrong with me: I'm frigid.
In my other incarnation I live out such a plethora of conflict that you wouldn't think I'd survive, would you, but I do; I wake up enraged, go to sleep in numbed despair, face what I know perfectly well is condescension and abstract contempt, get into quarrels, shout, fret about people I don't even know, live as if I were the only woman in the world trying to buck it all, work like a pig, strew my whole apartment with notes, articles, manuscripts, books, get frowsty, don't care, become stridently contentious, sometimes laugh and weep within five minutes together out of pure frustration. It takes me two hours to get to sleep and an hour to wake up. I dream at my desk. I dream all over the place. I'm very badly dressed.
But O how I relish my victuals! And O how I fuck!
III
Jeannine has an older brother who's a mathematics teacher in a New York high school. Their mother, who stays with him during vacations, was widowed when Jeannine was four. When she was a little baby Jeannine used to practice talking; she would get into a corner by herself and say words over and over again to get them right. Her first full sentence was, "See the moon." She pressed wildflowers and wrote poems in elementary school. Jeannine's brother, her sister-in-law, their two children, and her mother live for the summer in two cottages near a lake. Jeannine will stay in the smaller one with her mother. She conies downstairs with me behind her to find Mrs. Dadier arranging flowers in a pickle jar on the kitchenette table. I am behind Jeannine, but Jeannine can't see me, of course.
"Everyone's asking about you," says Mrs. Dadier, giving her daughter a peck on the cheek.
"Mm," says Jeannine, still sleepy. I duck behind the bookshelves that separate the living room from the kitchenette.
"We thought you might bring that nice young man with you again," says Mrs.
Dadier, setting cereal and milk in front of her daughter. Jeannine retreats into sulky impassivity. I make an awful face, which of course nobody sees.
"We've separated," says Jeannine, untruly.
"Why?" says Mrs. Dadier, her blue eyes opening wide. "What was the matter with him?"
He was impotent, mother. Now how could I say that to such a nice lady? I didn't.
"Nothing," says Jeannine. "Where's Bro?"
"Fishing," says Mrs. Dadier. Brother often goes out in the early morning and meditates over a fishing line. The ladies don't. Mrs. Dadier is afraid of his slipping, falling on a rock, and splitting open his head. Jeannine doesn't like fishing.
"We're going to have a nice day," says Mrs. Dadier. "There's a play tonight and a block dance. There are lots of young people, Jeannine." With her perpetually fresh smile Mrs. Dadier clears off the table where her daughter-in-law and the two children have breakfasted earlier; Eileen has her hands full with the children.
"Don't, mother," says Jeannine, looking down.
"I don't mind," says Mrs. Dadier. "Bless you, I've done it often enough."
Listless Jeannine pushes her chair back from the table. "You haven't finished," observes Mrs. Dadier, mildly surprised. We have to get out of here. "Well, I don't-I want to find Bro," says Jeannine, edging out, "I'll see you," and she's gone. Mrs. Dadier doesn't smile when there's nobody there. Mother and daughter wear the same face at times like that-calm and deathly tired-Jeannine idly pulling the heads off weeds at the side of the path with an abstract viciousness completely unconnected with anything going on in her head. Mrs. Dadier finishes the dishes and sighs. That's done. Always to do again. Jeannine comes to the path around the lake, the great vacation feature of the community, and starts round it, but there seems to be nobody nearby. She had hoped she would find her brother, who was always her favorite. ("My big brother") She sits on the rock by the side of the path, Jeannine the baby. Out in the lake there's a single canoe with two people in it; Jeannine's gaze, vaguely resentful, fastens on it for a moment, and then drifts off. Her sister-in-law is worried sick about one of the children; one of those children always has something. Jeannine bangs her knuckles idly on the rock. She's too sour for a romantic reverie and soon she gets up and walks on. Whoever comes to the lake anyway? Maybe Bro is at home.
She retraces her steps and takes a fork off the main path, idling along until the lake, with its crowded fringe of trees and brush, disappears behind her.
Eileen Dadier's youngest, the little girl, appears at the upstairs window for a moment and then vanishes. Bro is behind the cottage, cleaning fish, protecting his sports clothes with a rubber lab apron.
"Kiss me," says Jeannine. "O. K.?" She leans forward with her arms pulled back to avoid getting fish scales on herself, one cheek offered invitingly. Her brother kisses her. Eileen appears around the corner of the house, leading the boy.
"Kiss Auntie," she says. I'm so glad to see you, Jeannie."
"Jeannine," says Jeannine (automatically).
"Just think, Bud," says Eileen. "She must have got in last night. Did you get in last night?" Jeannine nods. Jeannine's nephew, who doesn't like anyone but his father, is pulling furiously at Eileen Dadier's hand, trying seriously to get his fingers out of hers. Bud finishes cleaning the fish. He wipes his hands methodically on a dish towel which Eileen will have to wash by hand to avoid contaminating her laundry, takes off his coat, and takes his knife and cleaver into the house, from whence comes the sound of running water. He comes out again, drying his hands on a towel "Oh, baby," says Eileen Dadier reproachfully to her son, "be nice to Auntie."
Jeannine's brother takes his son's hand from his wife. The little boy immediately stops wriggling.