"It's the Chronic Ill," Joanna said. "The bottom half of the front page.
Here, if you can see."
She handed it back to them, and they unfolded it between them. Walter turned on the top light.
Dave said, "You could have made a lot of money by betting me and then showing me."
"Didn't think," she said.
"'Over fifty women'!" Bobbie said. "Who the hell were they? What happened?"
"That's what I want to know," she said. "And why Kit Sundersen didn't mention it to me. I'm going to speak to her tomorrow."
They drove into Eastbridge and stood on line for the nine o'clock showing of an R-rated English movie. The couples in the line were cheerful and talkative, laughing in clusters of four and six, looking to the end of the line, waving at other couples. None of them looked familiar except an elderly couple Bobbie recognized from the Historieal Society; and the seventeen-year-old McCormick boy and a date, holding hands solemnly, trying to look eighteen.
The movie, they agreed, was "bloody good," and after it they drove back to Bobbie and Dave's house, which was chaotic, the boys still up and the sheepdog galumphing all over. When Bobbie and Dave had got rid of the sitter and the boys and the sheepdog, they had coffee and cheesecake in the tornado- struck living room.
"I knew I wasn't uniquely irresistible," Joanna said, looking at an Ike Mazzard drawing of Bobbie tucked in the frame of the over-the-mantel picture.
"Every girl's an Ike Mazzard girl, didn't you know?" Bobbie said, tucking the drawing more securely into the frame's corner, making the picture more crooked than it already was. "Boy, I wish I looked half this good."
"You're fine the way you are," Dave said, standing behind them.
"Isn't he a doll?" Bobbie said to Joanna. She turned and kissed Dave's cheek. "It's still your Sunday to get up early," she said.
"JOANNA EBERHART," KIT Sundersen said, and smiled. "How are you? Would you like to come in?"
"Yes, I would," Joanna said, "if you have a few minutes."
"Of course I do, come on in," Kit said. She was a pretty woman, black-haired and dimple-cheeked, and only slightly older-looking than in the Chronicle's unflattering photo. About thirty-three, Joanna guessed, going into the entrance hall. Its ivory vinyl floor looked as if one of those plastic shields in the commercials had just floated down onto it.
Sounds of a baseball game came from the living room.
"Herb is inside with Gary Claybrook, " Kit said, closing the front door. "Do you want to say hello to them?"
Joanna went to the living-room archway and looked in: Herb and Gary were sitting on a sofa watching a large color TV across the room. Gary was holding half a sandwich and chewing. A plate of sandwiches and two cans of beer stood on a cobbler's bench before them. The room was beige and brown and green; Colonial, immaculate. Joanna waited till a retreating ballplayer caught the ball, and said, "Hi."
Herb and Gary turned and smiled. "Hello, Joanna," they said, and Gary said, "How are you?" Herb said, "Is Walter here too?"
"Fine. No, he isn't," she said. "I just came over to talk with Kit. Good game?"
Herb looked away from her, and Gary said, "Very."
Kit, beside her and smelling of Walter's mother's perfume, whatever it was, said, "Come, let's go into the kitchen."
"Enjoy," she said to Herb and Gary. Gary, biting into his sandwich, eye-smiled through his glasses, and Herb looked at her and said, "Thanks, we will."
She followed Kit over the plastic-shield vinyl.
"Would you like a cup of coffee?" Kit asked.
"No, thanks." She followed Kit into the coffee-smelling kitchen. It was immaculate, of course-except for the open dryer, and the clothes and the laundry basket on the counter on top of it. The washer's round port was storming. The floor was more plastic shield.
"It's right on the stove," Kit said, "so it wouldn't be any trouble."
"Well in that case…"
She sat at a round green table while Kit got a cup and saucer from a neatly filled cabinet, the cups all hookhung, the plates filed in racks. "It's nice and quiet now," Kit said, closing the cabinet and going toward the stove. (Her figure, in a short sky-blue dress, was almost as terrific as Charmaine's.) "The kids are over at Gary and Donna's," she said. "I'm doing Marge McCormick's wash. She's got a bug of some kind and can barely move today."
"Oh that's a shame," Joanna said.
Kit fingertipped the top of a percolator and poured coffee from it. "I'm sure she'll be good as new in a day or two," she said. "How do you take this, Joanna?"
"Milk, no sugar, please."
Kit carried the cup and saucer toward the refrigerator. "If it's about that get-together again," she said, "I'm afraid I'm still awfully busy."
"It isn't that," Joanna said. She watched Kit open the refrigerator. "I wanted to find out what happened to the Women's Club," she said.
Kit stood at the lighted refrigerator, her back to Joanna. "The Women's Club?" she said. "Oh my, that was years ago. It disbanded."
"Why?" Joanna asked.
Kit closed the refrigerator and opened a drawer beside it. "Some of the women moved away," she said-she closed the drawer and turned, putting a spoon on the saucer-"and the rest of us just lost interest in it. At least I did." She came toward the table, watching the cup. "It wasn't ac- complishing anything useful," she said. "The meetings got boring after a while." She put the cup and saucer on the table and pushed them closer to Joanna.
"Is that enough milk?" she asked.
"Yes, that's fine," Joanna said. "Thanks. How come you didn't tell me about it when I was here the other time?"
Kit smiled, her dimples deepening. "You didn't ask me," she said. "If you had I would have told you. It's no secret. Would you like a piece of cake, or some cookies?"
"No, thanks," Joanna said.
"I'm going to fold these things," Kit said, going from the table.
Joanna watched her close the dryer and take something white from the pile of clothes on it. She shook it out-a T-shirt. Joanna said, "What's wrong with Bill McCormick? Can't he run a washer? I thought he was one of our aerospace brains."
"He's taking care of Marge," Kit said, folding the T-shirt. "These things came out nice and white, didn't they?" She put the folded T-shirt into the laundry basket, smiling.
Like an actress in a commercial.
That's what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That's what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.
"Kit," she said.
Kit looked at her.
"You must have been very young when you were president of the club,"
Joanna said. "Which means you're intelligent and have a certain amount of drive. Are you happy now? Tell me the truth. Do you feel you're living a full life?"
Kit looked at her, and nodded. "Yes, I'm happy," she said. "I feel I'm living a very full life. Herb's work is important, and he couldn't do it nearly as well if not for me. We're a unit, and between us we're raising a family, and doing optical research, and running a clean comfortable household, and doing community work."
"Through the Men's Association."
"Yes.
Joanna said, "Were the Women's Club meetings more boring than housework?"