She supposed it happened now and then, in a country where one-tenth of all women were supposed to be gay. But she knew, miserably, that Bill would be suspicious of any friendship she made. His ostentatious forgiveness didn’t stretch that far. And it made her miserable to tell lies.
She couldn’t discuss it with him. He went all tight lipped and gimlet eyed whenever they passed a butch type on the street. It was no use to argue that “the girls” were like everybody else, except in their sex life—and that wasn’t as different as he thought! She couldn’t say, “Look, we’re people too.” He wouldn’t let her bring the subject up.
And yet, according to the law of averages, two or three of the chicks in his office had to belong. Secretary, file clerk, ad writer, switchboard operator.
Thinking about it made her restless. She showered, pulled on a printed blue silk dress with a little ruffle at the neck—a Mrs. William Ollenfield dress, chosen to conform to Bill’s idea of a womanly woman—and doused herself with Je Reviens. She’d go downtown and look at clothes. Have a facial, manicure, hair-tint job, wave and set—hell, why not have her nose pierced too, while she was at it? She might even eat lunch in a tearoom, something squishy in a patty shell, and a fattening dessert. It was what the Wives would do.
Maybe if you did the housewife bit for ten or fifteen years you got used to it. Maybe a fifteen-minute bedding twice a week, without active participation, came to stand for sex. A pretty prospect.
THE CABBIE SAID, “Where you want to go, lady?”
She gave him her best smile. “I don’t know, I’m new in town. Where’s the best place to get my hair done?”
He looked her over carefully, twisting around in the seat. Apparently she qualified. “There’s Shapiro’s. That’s about the best store in town, and they got a regular beauty parlor. They got everything Marshall Field’s has, except the escalator.”
“All right, let’s try Shapiro’s.”
She gave him fifty cents more than the meter said, and he thanked her politely but without enthusiasm and drove away, leaving her standing in a completely strange place, trying to organize her thoughts.
This was Main Street. The sign at the corner said so, and besides it looked like Main Street. Parking meters, stores, banks, traffic lights. Shapiro’s was four stories high. The Waubonsie State Savings and Loan towered five floors above it, on the corner. She already felt at home with the Savings and Loan; a book of its pale-green checks lay alongside the lipstick in her handbag.
Shapiro’s was air-conditioned. She went in, past the display windows with a few summer evening frocks and accessories, past the lady clerks who were surely older than their hair styles and younger than their feet, past the impulse tables of jewelry and gloves, suntan lotion, and dark glasses. In this familiar setting her timidity melted away. She was wafted to the top floor in a slow elevator piloted by a young tan girl in white gloves, and found the beauty salon by the acrid smell of wave lotion. The reception desk was standard and so was the reception: they were booked solid, but they would try to fit her in.
She chose one of a long row of identical metal mesh chairs and looked around at the other waiting women. They all looked married. Business girls, of course, would come in on their lunch hour. Halfway through her second cigarette the receptionist said, “Miss Bernadette will take you now,” and there was Miss Bernadette, plump and pleasant in her yellow nylon uniform. With a wedding ring.
But it seemed to her that surely, if she looked searchingly and didn’t miss anybody, she would find someone. Her hair rinsed and dried and baked into little tight curls, she sat through the boredom of a manicure. The woman at the next table, having her nails tinted a pale silvery mauve, was slim, gray haired, haughty. She returned Frances’s inquiring look with the polite disinterest of one to whom other women are only relatives or neighbors.
I give up, Frances thought. But she was unable to give up. A need she didn’t want to admit sent her through the aisles of the store, looking at the counter displays, buying a box of stationery here and three pairs of sheer nylons there, sizing up the clerks and the women who were desultorily shopping. She knew she was being silly. She and Bake and the others had talked about the wacky idea people have that “you can always tell.” The men in the insurance office had bragged about “knowing one every time,” looking past her as she sat filling out forms. Every woman in the room could be available and it wouldn’t show. “Still,” Kay had insisted, “sometimes you sort of know. It’s not the clothes or the hairdo. I don’t know what it is.” And Bake, flicking out her cigarette, “Pure wishful thinking.”
Frances kept on looking.
It was a hot day. Her back ached from shoving furniture around and her scalp itched from the wave lotion. Her toes pinched. She went out into the torrid street carrying her packages, remembering too late that she had meant to look at dresses.
There were other stores, none so large or up-to-date as Shapiro’s but all carrying familiar brand names. A Sears Roebuck on one corner faced a Steinway on the other corner. Kresge, Woolworth, and Ben Franklin were lined up on the same block. There were jewelry stores with engagement rings in little slotted boxes. She passed a tavern that looked cool and dark, thought about going in for a pre-luncheon martini and realized that she didn’t know the customs in Waubonsie. Maybe nice women didn’t go into bars unescorted. She walked along.
What was she looking for, she wondered, an oriental bazaar with teak and spices and carved ivory?
A sign with Chinese characters, red on gold, caught her eye. She moved toward it. And there was her bazaar.
The window was narrow, with a dozen books lying at careless angles. A complete edition of Shakespeare in half calf, open at the Balcony Scene—nice clear print with curly serifs and elegant capitals. Half a dozen remaindered novels. A thin volume that could only be hand-set poetry, jacketed in burlap. Katherine Mansfield’s Journals, both volumes, faded purple. And in the front of the window, flanked by a chunk of uncut rose crystal and a small, flowered bowl, lay a wood carving of a cat done with love and skill, the essence of catness. I’ve got to have that, she decided, entering to a thin tinkle of chimes.
A young man floated forward to meet her. If she had felt baffled about the women in the store, unable to tell which were her own kind, there was no doubt about this boy. The insurance salesmen would have placed him without a second look. His face was pretty rather than handsome, his hair a little too long and too carefully disposed; he came to an elegant stop leaning on the counter. It was shirtsleeve weather, but his narrow striped collar was held by a little gold pin. A little fine-drawn, a little precious; and in this alien land her heart warmed to him. She could have hugged him.
A little nellie, she thought in automatic criticism. And realized, reddening, that he was sizing her up too and what he was seeing was Mrs. William Ollenfield. She was a little angry that he should judge by appearances. The boys are all artistic and the girls are all athletic. Kay, for instance—Kay wouldn’t walk across the street if she had cab fare. She said coldly, “The cat in the window—it’s for sale?”
“It’s nice, isn’t it? I have a friend who carves them. All different and individual—you’ll never see it duplicated.”
She was reluctant to ask what it cost, as though originality could be paid for in money. It didn’t matter anyway. Mrs. William Ollenfield had plenty for little impulsive purchases. Looking around, delaying her commitment to the cat, she saw that the place was really a secondhand store, a little dusty and shabby. But a length of Persian silk in dull reds and blues lay across a small table, there were three or four small water colors on one wall, and a shelf held several pieces of handmade pottery. “The pictures?”
He made a small modest gesture. “Mine. I have fun doing them, and every once in a while somebody buys one.” He smiled. “Why don’t you look around, if you’re not in any hurry? I mean, if you’re interested