The Stepford Wives Read online

  ‘Do I get to see?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course!’ Mazzard said, and half rose, smiling, holding out the open notebook to her.

  Walter looked too, and Frank leaned in to see.

  Portraits of her; there were page after page of them, small and precise – and flattering, as Ike Mazzard’s work had always been. Full faces, three-quarter views, profiles; smiling, not smiling, talking, frowning.

  ‘These are beautiful,’ Walter said, and Frank said, ‘Great, Ike!’ Claude and Herb came around behind the sofa.

  She leafed back through the pages. ‘They’re – wonderful,’ she said. ‘I wish I could say they were absolutely accurate—’

  ‘But they are!’ Mazzard said.

  ‘God bless you.’ She gave the notebook to him, and he put it on his knee and turned its pages, getting out his pen. He wrote on a page, and tore it out and offered it to her.

  It was one of the three-quarter views, a non-smiling one, with the familiar no-capitals ike mazzard signature. She showed it to Walter; he said, ‘Thanks, Ike.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  She smiled at Mazzard. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I forgive you for blighting my adolescence.’ She smiled at all of them. ‘Does anyone want coffee?’

  They all did, except Claude, who wanted tea.

  She went into the kitchen and put the drawing on the place mats on top of the refrigerator. An Ike Mazzard drawing of her! Who’da thunk it, back home when she was eleven or twelve, reading Mom’s Journals and Companions? It was foolish of her to have gotten so uptight about it. Mazzard had been nice to do it.

  Smiling, she ran water into the coffee-maker, plugged it in, and put in the basket and spooned in coffee. She put the top on, pressed the plastic lid down onto the coffee can, and turned around. Coba leaned in the doorway watching her, his arms folded, his shoulder to the jamb.

  Very cool in his jade turtleneck (matching his eyes, of course) and slate-grey corduroy suit.

  He smiled at her and said, ‘I like to watch women doing little domestic chores.’

  ‘You came to the right town,’ she said. She tossed the spoon into the sink and took the coffee can to the refrigerator and put it in.

  Coba stayed there, watching her.

  She wished Walter would come. ‘You don’t seem particularly dizzy,’ she said, getting out a saucepan for Claude’s tea. ‘Why do they call you Diz?’

  ‘I used to work at Disneyland,’ he said.

  She laughed, going to the sink. ‘No, really,’ she said.

  ‘That’s really.’

  She turned around and looked at him.

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  She thought, and knew.

  ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

  To hell with him; she would. ‘You don’t look like someone who enjoys making people happy.’

  Torpedoing forever, no doubt, the admission of women to the hallowed and sacrosanct Men’s Association.

  Coba looked at her – disparagingly. ‘How little you know,’ he said.

  And smiled and got off the jamb, and turned and walked away.

  ‘I’m not so keen on el Presidente,’ she said, undressing, and Walter said, ‘Neither am I. He’s cold as ice. But he won’t be in office forever.’

  ‘He’d better not be,’ she said, ‘or women’ll never get in. When are elections?’

  ‘Right after the first of the year.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s with Burnham-Massey, on Route Nine. So is Claude.’

  ‘Oh listen, what’s his last name?’

  ‘Claude’s? Axhelm.’

  Kim began crying, and was burning hot; and they were up till after three, taking her temperature (a hundred and three at first), reading Dr Spock, calling Dr Verry, and giving her cool baths and alcohol rubs.

  Bobbie found a live one. ‘At least she is compared to the rest of these clunks,’ her voice rasped from the phone. ‘Her name is Charmaine Wimperis, and if you squint a little she turns into Raquel Welch. They’re up on Burgess Ridge in a two-hundred-thousand-dollar contemporary, and she’s got a maid and a gardener and – now hear this – a tennis court.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I thought that would get you out of the cellar. You’re invited to play, and for lunch too. I’ll pick you up around eleven-thirty.’

  ‘Today? I can’t! Kim is still home.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Could we make it Wednesday? Or Thursday, just to be safe.’

  ‘Wednesday,’ Bobbie said. ‘I’ll check with her and call you back.’

  Wham! pow! slam! Charmaine was good, too goddamn good; the ball came zinging straight and hard, first to one side of the court and then to the other; it kept her racing from side to side and then drove her all the way back – a just-inside-the-liner that she barely caught. She ran in after it, but Charmaine smashed it down into the left net corner – ungettable – and took the game and the set, six-three. After taking the first set six-two. ‘Oh God, I’ve had it!’ Joanna said. ‘What a fiasco! Oh boy!’

  ‘One more!’ Charmaine called, backing to the serve line. ‘Come on, one more!’

  ‘I can’t! I’m not going to be able to walk tomorrow as it is!’ She picked up the ball. ‘Come on, Bobbie, you play!’

  Bobbie, sitting cross-legged on the grass outside the mesh fence, her face trayed on a sun reflector, said, ‘I haven’t played since camp, for Chrissake.’

  ‘Just a game then!’ Charmaine called. ‘One more game, Joanna!’

  ‘All right, one more game!’

  Charmaine won it.

  ‘You killed me but it was great!’ Joanna said as they walked off the court together. ‘Thank you!’

  Charmaine, patting her high-boned cheeks carefully with an end of her towel, said, ‘You just have to get back in practice, that’s all. You have a first-rate serve.’

  ‘Fat lot of good it did me.’

  ‘Will you play often? All I’ve got now are a couple of teenage boys, both with permanent erections.’

  Bobbie said, ‘Send them to my place’ – getting up from the ground.

  They walked up the flagstone path toward the house.

  ‘It’s a terrific court,’ Joanna said, towelling her arm.

  ‘Then use it,’ Charmaine said. ‘I used to play every day with Ginnie Fisher – do you know her? – but she flaked out on me. Don’t you, will you? How about tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh I couldn’t!’

  They sat on a terrace under a Cinzano umbrella, and the maid, a slight grey-haired woman named Nettie, brought them a pitcher of Bloody Marys and a bowl of cucumber dip and crackers. ‘She’s marvellous,’ Charmaine said. ‘A German Virgo; if I told her to lick my shoes she’d do it. What are you, Joanna?’

  ‘An American Taurus.’

  ‘If you tell her to lick your shoes she spits in your eye,’ Bobbie said. ‘You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?’

  ‘I certainly do,’ Charmaine said, pouring Bloody Marys. ‘You would too if you came to it with an open mind.’ (Joanna squinted at her: no, not Raquel Welch, but darn close.) ‘That’s why Ginnie Fisher flaked out on me,’ she said. ‘She’s a Gemini; they change all the time. Taureans are stable and dependable. Here’s to tennis galore.’

  Joanna said, ‘This particular Taurean has a house and two kids and no German Virgo.’

  Charmaine had one child, a nine-year-old son named Merrill. Her husband Ed was a television producer. They had moved to Stepford in July. Yes, Ed was in the Men’s Association, and no, Charmaine wasn’t bothered by the sexist injustice. ‘Anything that gets him out of the house nights is fine with me,’ she said. ‘He’s Aries and I’m Scorpio.’

  ‘Oh well,’ Bobbie said, and put a dip-loaded cracker into her mouth.

  ‘It’s a very bad combination,’ Charmaine said. ‘If I knew then what I know now.’

  ‘Bad in what way
?’ Joanna asked.

  Which was a mistake. Charmaine told them at length about her and Ed’s manifold incompatibilities – social, emotional, and above all, sexual. Nettie served them lobster Newburg and julienne potatoes – ‘Oi, my hips,’ Bobbie said, spooning lobster onto her plate – and Charmaine went on in candid detail. Ed was a sex fiend and a real weirdo. ‘He had this rubber suit made for me, at God knows what cost, in England. I ask you, rubber? “Put it on one of your secretaries,” I said, “you’re not going to get me into it.” Zippers and padlocks all over. You can’t lock up a Scorpio. Virgos, any time; their thing is to serve. But a Scorpio’s thing is to go his own way.’

  ‘If Ed knew then what you know now,’ Joanna said.

  ‘It wouldn’t have made the least bit of difference,’ Charmaine said. ‘He’s crazy about me. Typical Aries.’

  Nettie brought raspberry tarts and coffee. Bobbie groaned. Charmaine told them about other weirdos she had known. She had been a model and had known several.

  She walked them to Bobbie’s car. ‘Now look,’ she said to Joanna, ‘I know you’re busy, but any time you have a free hour, any time, just come on over. You don’t even have to call; I’m almost always here.’

  ‘Thanks, I will,’ Joanna said. ‘And thanks for today. It was great.’

  ‘Any time,’ Charmaine said. She leaned to the window. ‘And look, both of you,’ she said, ‘would you do me a favour? Would you read Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs? Just read it and see how right she is. They’ve got it in the Centre Pharmacy, in paper. Will you? Please?’

  They gave in, smiling, and promised they would.

  ‘Ciao!’ she called, waving to them as they drove away.

  ‘Well,’ Bobbie said, rounding the curve of the driveway, ‘she may not be ideal NOW material, but at least she’s not in love with her vacuum cleaner.’

  ‘My God, she’s beautiful,’ Joanna said.

  ‘Isn’t she? Even for these parts, where you’ve got to admit they look good even if they don’t think good. Boy, what a marriage! How about that business with the suit? And I thought Dave had spooky ideas!’

  ‘Dave?’ Joanna said, looking at her.

  Bobbie side-flashed a smile. ‘You’re not going to get any true confessions out of me,’ she said. ‘I’m a Leo, and our thing is changing the subject. You and Walter want to go to a movie Saturday night?’

  They had bought the house from a couple named Pilgrim, who had lived in it for only two months and had moved to Canada. The Pilgrims had bought it from a Mrs McGrath, who had bought it from the builder eleven years before. So most of the junk in the storage room had been left by Mrs McGrath. Actually it wasn’t fair to call it junk: there were two good Colonial side chairs that Walter was going to strip and refinish some day; there was a complete twenty-volume Book of Knowledge, now on the shelves in Pete’s room; and there were boxes and small bundles of hardware and oddments that, though not finds, at least seemed likely to be of eventual use. Mrs McGrath had been a thoughtful saver.

  Joanna had transferred most of the not-really-junk to a far corner of the cellar before the plumber had installed the sink, and now she was moving the last of it – cans of paint and bundles of asbestos roof shingles – while Walter hammered at a plywood counter and Pete handed him nails. Kim had gone with the Van Sant girls and Carol to the library.

  Joanna unrolled a packet of yellowed newspaper and found inside it an inch-wide paintbrush, its clean bristles slightly stiff but still pliable. She began rolling it back into the paper, a half page of the Chronicle, and the words WOMEN’S CLUB caught her eye. HEARS AUTHOR. She turned the paper to the side and looked at it.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ she said.

  Pete looked at her, and Walter, hammering, said, ‘What is it?’

  She got the brush out of the paper and put it down, and held the half page open with both hands, reading.

  Walter stopped hammering and turned and looked at her. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  She read for another moment, and looked at him; and looked at the paper, and at him. ‘There was – a women’s club here,’ she said. ‘Betty Friedan spoke to them. And Kit Sundersen was the president. Dale Coba’s wife and Frank Roddenberry’s wife were officers.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ he said.

  She looked at the paper, and read: ‘“Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique, addressed members of the Stepford Women’s Club Tuesday evening in the Fairview Lane home of Mrs Herbert Sundersen, the club’s president. Over fifty women applauded Mrs Friedan as she cited the inequities and frustrations besetting the modern-day housewife …”’ She looked at him.

  ‘Can I do some?’ Pete asked.

  Walter handed the hammer to him. ‘When was that?’ he asked her.

  She looked at the paper. ‘It doesn’t say; it’s the bottom half,’ she said. ‘There’s a picture of the officers. “Mrs Steven Margolies, Mrs Dale Coba, author Betty Friedan, Mrs Herbert Sundersen, Mrs Frank Roddenberry, and Mrs Duane T. Anderson”.’ She opened the half page toward him, and he came to her and took a side of it. ‘If this doesn’t beat everything,’ he said, looking at the picture and the article.

  ‘I spoke to Kit Sundersen,’ she said. ‘She didn’t say a word about it. She didn’t have time for a get-together. Like all the others.’

  ‘This must have been six or seven years ago,’ he said, fingering the edge of the yellowed paper.

  ‘Or more,’ she said. ‘The Mystique came out while I was still working. Andreas gave me his review copy, remember?’

  He nodded, and turned to Pete, who was hammering vigorously at the counter top. ‘Hey, take it easy,’ he said, ‘you’ll make half moons.’ He turned back to the paper. ‘Isn’t this something?’ he said. ‘It must have just petered out.’

  ‘With fifty members?’ she said. ‘Over fifty? Applauding Friedan, not hissing her?’

  ‘Well it’s not here now, is it?’ he said, letting the paper go. ‘Unless they’ve got the world’s worst publicity chairman. I’ll ask Herb what happened next time I see him.’ He went back to Pete. ‘Say, that’s good work,’ he said.

  She looked at the paper and shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘Who were the women? They can’t all have moved away.’

  ‘Come on now,’ Walter said, ‘you haven’t spoken to every woman in town.’

  ‘Bobbie has, darn near,’ she said. She folded the paper, and folded it, and put it on the carton of her equipment. The paintbrush was there; she picked it up. ‘Need a paintbrush?’ she said.

  Walter turned and looked at her. ‘You don’t expect me to paint these things, do you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘It was wrapped in the paper.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, and turned to the counter.

  She put the brush down, and crouched and gathered a few loose shingles. ‘How could she not have mentioned it?’ she said. ‘She was the president.’

  As soon as Bobbie and Dave got into the car, she told them.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not one of those newspapers they print in penny arcades?’ Bobbie said. ‘“Fred Smith Lays Elizabeth Taylor”?’

  ‘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 fami
liar except an elderly couple Bobbie recognized from the Historical 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 colour 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.’