“Yeah? And what’s the worst?”
“I know what men are like.” Jeanne put down her cigarette and turned to look at her friend. “I know they’ll all try to seduce you, figuratively. Or even perhaps literally.”
“Aw, come on.” Polly shook her head.
“It’s true. And for two reasons: first, because they’re all going to be in your book. Naturally they’ll want to go down in art history as good guys.”
“Well, maybe so,” Polly said, suddenly feeling powerful. “But that doesn’t mean they’ll make a pass at me.”
“I bet they will,” Jeanne said. “Some of them, anyhow. That’s the way men’s minds work. And second, they could try to seduce you just because that’s the traditional male response to an attractive unattached woman. It doesn’t matter if she’s gay or straight. A woman who doesn’t need men — they’ll do anything to destroy her, prove she doesn’t exist. When they hear of someone like you, or me, they say to each other: ‘All she needs is a good lay.’ ”
“Sure, some men do, but —”
“You remember what happened to Cathy when she was up in Vermont? If Ida hadn’t come back from the village in time, their redneck neighbor, that Cathy thought was such a nice guy, would have more or less raped her. He would have told himself she was asking for it, because she always invited him in and gave him a cup of coffee after he finished mowing their field.”
“Yeah,” Polly said. “Still, I figure I’m pretty safe. Paolo Carducci is over seventy and has a heart condition, and Garrett Jones is over seventy and married.” She laughed.
“Yes; but from what you told me, he used to have quite a reputation. All I’m saying is, watch out.” Jeanne extinguished her cigarette delicately in her saucer.
“Okay, I will.”
“That’s right. Well, I guess I better be getting back to Brooklyn before the muggers start their night’s work.” Jeanne gave a long sigh.
“You could stay over if you liked,” Polly said. “Stevie’s room’s free now.” She sighed in her turn; Stevie, now thirteen, had just left to visit his father in Colorado.
“Oh, thank you; I’d love to, it’s so peaceful here. But I can’t tonight. I think Betsy’s going to call.” Jeanne stood up; her usual serene expression had been replaced by one of tension and anxiety. She had recently become involved with a young married woman who taught part-time at her college, and who had what Jeanne described as a neurotic, abusive husband.
“Good luck,” Polly said.
“Thank you,” Jeanne replied distractedly. “Maybe some other time.”
Alone, Polly scraped tabbouli into a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap. As she opened the fridge to put it away she was reminded that somehow she had to use up the crunchy peanut butter, grape jelly, raisin bread, milk, Pepsi, and hot dogs left behind yesterday by Stevie. There was no use saving any of it as she’d ordinarily do, because this time he wouldn’t be home in a week or so; he’d be gone the whole fall term. Logically, Polly could see the point of this. It would give Stevie a chance to know his father better, and free her to travel and do research for her book. But illogically she felt awful about it. Her son had been gone only twenty-four hours, and already she missed him terribly.
And what would happen to Stevie while he was away? Raising her eyes from the sink, Polly stared past the smudged glass in the direction of Colorado. Her view was restricted, for though the building was on Central Park West, her apartment didn’t face it, but confronted another building the color of birdshit and a vacant lot littered with broken glass and stunted sumac.
When Stevie looked out of the windows of his father’s new architect-designed split-level in Colorado (clearly pictured in the background of a snapshot of him taken earlier that summer), he wouldn’t see a dirty brick wall and piles of trash, but a wide-open vista of mountains and plains and long drifting Ansel Adams clouds. Would New York, and this apartment, seem cramped and dirty then, a place he didn’t want to come home to?
Jeanne thought it was a good idea for Stevie to stay in Colorado for four months. She believed he needed a maturing experience; also she believed that Polly had invested too much in him emotionally. She thought it was a mistake to care too deeply for male children, or become too close to them, since they would inevitably grow into men — that is, into aliens.
But whatever Jeanne said, Polly couldn’t think of Stevie as an alien. He wasn’t like most males; he had been raised on nonsexist principles from birth, read aloud to from Stories for Free Children, given dolls as well as trucks to play with, taken to women doctors and dentists. For years his freedom from prejudice had been Polly’s greatest pride. Over Christmas and spring vacations, and for two weeks in July when he went to stay with his father, she held her breath, fearing that he would come back infected with ugly paternalist ideas; but he never had. But what would happen when he was exposed to these psychological germs not for a week or two, but for nearly four months?
Jeanne didn’t understand what she felt about Stevie, and she probably never would, Polly thought, because she had no children of her own. She didn’t understand, either, what it meant to be married; how much you invested, how long and desperately you tried to make things work out. Often, when Polly related something Jim had once done or said, she saw a particular look, between amusement and impatience, cross her friend’s gentle, rounded features. Rather slow, weren’t you? Rather dense? this look said.
What if Jeanne was right? Polly thought as she rinsed a plate. What if even now the child she loved was turning into a man like other men?
There were so goddamn many dangers in this culture. Magazines, books, newspapers, television were heavy with overt and covert sexist propaganda, and Polly wouldn’t be around now to point it out to Stevie. Some of the kids he played with had already been brainwashed, she’d seen the signs. And Stevie’s father, Jim Meyer, was in many ways the most dangerous companion he could have, because his sexism was so well concealed. After all, Polly herself, though an adult, had been deceived by him. For fourteen years she had believed him to be a decent, generous, sensitive, nonchauvinist man.
Jim Meyer had first appeared one afternoon at the auction gallery where Polly then worked. He was a tall, solid man about her own age, with regular features and wide gray eyes rimmed with sooty, transparent skin, giving him an intriguingly — and as it turned out, deceptively — sophisticated and world-weary air. (Stevie had inherited this characteristic; even after nine hours of sleep he and his father both looked as if they’d been up all night.)
Jim had come in to arrange the sale of some valuable but not very interesting nineteenth-century paintings and furniture that belonged to his grandmother, who was moving to a nursing home. Polly was drawn to him at once, not only by his looks, but by his good manners. Since she was obviously working for a living, and not a society girl amusing herself while she waited to make a good marriage, many of the people Polly had to deal with at the gallery treated her like a typist or even like a housemaid. But Jim was considerate, even deferential. As it turned out, he was incapable of being rude to anyone.
Though she was attracted to Jim Meyer, Polly didn’t expect much to come of it, partly because he was a medical researcher. From years of living with her stepfather, Bob Milner, she had formed the false opinion that scientists were like icebergs. Nine-tenths of them was under the surface, and most of that nine-tenths was ice. She didn’t get her hopes up when Jim kept returning to the gallery on various excuses; she assumed that he came to see his grandmother’s paintings and furniture before they disappeared forever. His attachment to them made her both sad and impatient — though of course she’d seen the same thing in other consignors.