"It was your idea," he said.
"Would you have suggested it if I hadn't?"
"Now you see?" he said. "Do you hear how you're talking? I want you to think about what I said. You can't disrupt all our lives on the spur of the moment this way. It's unreasonable to expect to." He turned around and went out of the kitchen.
She stood there, and put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. She stayed that way, and then lowered her hand, opened her eyes, and shook her head. She went to the refrigerator and opened it, and took out a covered bowl and a market-pack of meat.
HE SAT AT THE DESK, writing on a yellow pad. A cigarette in the ashtray ribboned smoke up into the lamplight. He looked at her and took his glasses off.
"All right," she said. "I'll-speak to someone. But a woman."
"Good," he said. "That's a good idea."
"And you'll put a deposit on the house tomorrow?"
"Yes," he said. "Unless there's something radically wrong with it."
"There isn't," she said. "It's a good house and it's only six years old.
With a good mortgage."
"Fine," he said.
She stood looking at him. "Do you want me to change?" she asked him.
"No," he said. "I'd just like you to put on a little lipstick once in a while. That's no big change. I'd like me to change a little too, like lose a few pounds for instance."
She pushed her hair back straight. "I'm going to work down in the darkroom for a while," she said. "Pete's still awake. Will you keep an ear open?"
"Sure," he said, and smiled at her.
She looked at him, and turned and went away.
SHE CALLED THE GOOD OLD Department of Health, and they referred her to the county medical society, and they gave her the names and phone numbers of five women psychiatrists. The two nearest ones, in Eastbridge, were booked solid through mid-January; but the third, in Sheffield, north of Norwood, could see her on Saturday afternoon at two. Dr. Margaret Faucher; she sounded nice over the phone.
She finished the Christmas cards, and Pete's costume; bought toys and books for Pete and Kim, and a bottle of champagne for Bobbie and Dave. She had got a gold belt buckle for Walter in the city, and had planned to canvass the Route Nine antique stores for legal documents; instead she bought him a tan cardigan.
The first Christmas cards came in-from her parents and Walter's junior partners, from the McCormicks, the Chamalians, and the Van Sants. She lined them up on a living-room bookshelf.
A check came from the agency: a hundred and twentyfive dollars.
On Friday afternoon, despite two inches of snow and more falling, she put Pete and Kim into the station wagon and drove over to Bobbie's.
Bobbie welcomed them pleasantly; Adam and Kenny and the dogs welcomed them noisily. Bobbie made hot chocolate, and Joanna carried the tray into the family room. "Watch your step," Bobbie said, "I waxed the floor this morning."
"I noticed," Joanna said.
She sat in the kitchen watching Bobbie-beautiful, shapely Bobbie-cleaning the oven with paper towels and a spray can of cleaner. "What have you done to yourself, for God's sake?" she asked.
"I'm not eating the way I used to," Bobbie said. "And I'm getting more exercise."
"You must have lost ten pounds!"
"No, just two or three. I'm wearing a girdle."
"Bobbie, will you please tell me what happened last weekend?"
"Nothing happened. We stayed in."
"Did you smoke anything, take anything? Drugs, I mean."
"No. Don't be silly."
"Bobbie, you're not you any more! Can't you see that? You've become like the others!"
"Honestly, Joanna, that's nonsense," Bobbie said. "Of course I'm me. I simply realized that I was awfully sloppy and self-indulgent, and now I'm doing my job conscientiously, the way Dave does his."
"I know, I know," she said. "How does he feel about it?"
"He's very happy."
"I'll bet he is."
"This stuff really works. Do you use it?"
I'm not crazy, she thought. I'm not crazy.
Jonny and two other boys were making a snowman in front of the house next door. She left Pete and Kim in the station wagon and went over and said hello to him. "Oh, hi!" he said. "Do you have any money for me?"
"Not yet," she said, shielding her face against the downfall of thick flakes.
"Jonny, 1-1 can't get over the way your mother's changed."
"Hasn't she?" he said, nodding, panting.
"I can't understand it," she said.
"Neither can I," he said. "She doesWt shout any more, she makes hot breakfasts…" He looked over at the house and frowned. Snowflakes clung to his face. "I hope it lasts," he said, "but I bet it doesn't."
DR. FANCHER WAS A SMALL elfin-faced woman in her early fifties, with short swirls of graying brown hair, a sharp marionette nose, and smiling blue-gray eyes. She wore a dark blue dress, a gold pin engraved with the Chinese Yang-and-Yin symbol, and a wedding ring. Her office was cheerful, with Chippendale furniture and Paul Klee prints, and striped curtains translucent against the brightness of sun and snow outside. There was a brown leather couch with a paper-covered headrest, but Joanna sat in the chair facing the mahogany desk, on which dozens of small white papers flagedged the sides of a green blotter.
She said, "I'm here at my husbanXs suggestion. We moved to Stepford early in September, and I want to move away as soon as possible. We've put a deposit on a house in Eastbridge, but only because I insisted on it. He feels I'm-being irrational."
She told Dr. Fancher why she wanted to move: about Stepford women, and how Charmaine and then Bobbie had changed and become like them. "Have you been to Stepford?" she asked.
"Only once," Dr. Fancher said. "I heard that it was worth looking at, which it is. I've also heard that it's an insular, unsocial community."
"Which it is, believe me."
Dr. Fancher knew of the city in Texas with the low crime rate. "Lithium is what's doing it, apparently," she said. "There was a paper about it in one of the journals."
"Bobbie and I wrote to the Department of Health," Joanna said. "They said there was nothing in Stepford that could be affecting anyone. I suppose they thought we were crackpots. At the time, actually, I thought Bobbie- was being a little overanxious. I only helped with the letter because she asked me to…" She looked at her clasped hands and worked them against each other.
Dr. Fancher stayed silent.
"I've be-un to suspect-" Joanna said. "Oh Jesus, 'suspect'; that sounds so-" She worked her hands together, looking at them.
Dr. Fancher said, "Begun to suspect what?"
She drew her hands apart and wiped them on her skirt. "I've begun to suspect that the men are behind it," she said. She looked at Dr. Fancher.
Dr. Fancher didn't smile or seem surprised. "Which men?" she asked.
Joanna looked at her hands. "My husband," she said. "Bobbie's husband, Charmaine's." She looked at Dr. Fancher. "All of them," she said.
She told her about the Men's Association.
"I was taking pictures in the Center one night a couple of months ago," she said. "That's where those Colonial shops are; the house overlooks them.
The windows were open and there was-a smell in the air. Of medicine, or chemicals. And then the shades were pulled down, maybe because they knew I was out there; this policeman had seen me, he stopped and talked to me."
She leaned forward. "There are a lot of sophisticated industrial plants on Route Nine," she said, "and a lot of the men who have high-level jobs in them live in Stepford and belong to the Men's Association. Something goes on there every night, and I don't think it's just fixing toys for needy children, and pool and poker.