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?'
Kit frowned. 'No,' she said, 'but they weren't as useful as housework.
You're not drinking your coffee. Is anything wrong with it?'
'No,' Joanna said, 'I was waiting for it to cool.' She picked up the cup.
'Oh,' Kit said, and smiled, and turned to the clothes and folded something.
Joanna watched her. Should she ask who the other women had been? No, they would be like Kit; and what difference would it make? She drank from the cup. The coffee was strong and rich-flavored, the best she'd tasted in a long time.
'How are your children?' Kit asked.
'Fine,' she said.
She started to ask the brand of the coffee, but stopped herself and drank more of it.
MAYBE THE HARDWARE store's panes would have wobbled the moon's reflection interestingly, but there was no way of telling, not with the panes where they were and the moon where it was. C'est la vie. She mooched around the Center for a while, getting the feel of the night-empty curve of street, the row of white shopfronts on one side, the rise to the hill on the other; the library, the Historical Society cottage. She wasted some film on streetlights and litter baskets-clich6 timebut it was only black-and-white, so what the hell. A cat trotted down the path from the library, a silver-gray cat with a black moon-shadow stuck to its paws; it crossed the street toward the market parking lot. No, thanks, we're not keen on cat pix.
She set up the tripod on the library lawn and took shots of the shopfronts, using the fifty-millimeter lens and making ten-, twelve-, and fourteen-second exposures. An odd medicinal smell soured the air-coming on the breeze at her back. It almost reminded her of something in her childhood, but fell short. A syrup she'd been given? A toy she had had?
She reloaded by moonlight, gathered the tripod, and backed across the street, scouting the library for a good angle. She found one and set up.
The white clapboard siding was black-banded in the overhead moonlight; the windows showed bookshelved walls lighted faintly from within. She focused with extra-special care, and starting at eight seconds, took each-a- second- longer exposures up to eighteen. One of them, at least, would catch the inside bookshelved walls without overexposing the siding.
She went to the car for her sweater, and looked around as she went back to the camera. The Historical Society cottage? No, it wa~i too tree-shadowed, and dull anyway. But the Men's Assoc.iation house, up on the hill, had a surprisingly comic look to it: a square old nineteenth-century house, solid and symmetrical, tipsily parasolled by a glistening TV antenna. The four tall upstairs windows were vividly alight, their sashes raised. Figures moved inside.
She took the fifty-millimeter lens out of the camera and was putting in the one-thirty-five when headlight be s swept onto the street and grew brighter. She turned and a spotlight blinded her. Closing her eyes, she tightened the lens; then shielded her eyes and squinted.
The car stopped, and the spotlight swung away and died to an orange spark. She blinked a few times, still seeing the blinding radiance.
A police car. It stayed where it was, about thirty feet away from her on the other side of the street. A man's voice spoke softly inside it; spoke and kept speaking.
She waited.
The car moved forward, coming opposite her, and stopped. The young policeman with the unpolicemanlike brown mustache smiled at her and said, 'Evening, ma'am.' She had seen him several times, once in the stationery store buying packs of colored crepe paper, one each of every color they had.
'Hello,' she said, smiling.
He was alone in the car; he must have been talking on his radio. About her? 'I'm sorry I hit you with the spot that way,' he said. 'Is that your car there by the post office?'
'Yes,' she said. 'I didn't park it here because I was-'
'That's all right, I'm just checking.' He squinted at the camera. 'That's a good-looking camera,' he said. 'What kind is it?'
'A Pentax,' she said.
'Pentax,' he said. He looked at the camera, and at her. 'And you can take pictures at night with it?'
'Time exposures,' she said.
'Oh, sure,' he said. 'How long does it take, on a night like this?'
'Well that depends,' she said.
He wanted to know on what, and what kind of film she was using. And whether she was a professional photographer, and how much a Pentax cost, just roughly. And how it stacked up against other cameras.
She tried not to grow impatient; she should be glad she lived in a town where a policeman could stop and talk for a few minutes.
Finally he smiled and said, 'Well, I guess I'd better let you go ahead with it. Good night.'
'Good night,' she said, smiling.
He drove off slowly. The silver-gray cat ran through his headlight beams.
She watched the car for a moment, and then turned to the camera and checked the lens. Crouching to the viewfinder, she levered into a good framing of the Men's Association house and locked the tripod head. She focused, sharpening the finder's image of the high square tipsyantennaed house. Two of its upstairs windows were dark now; and another was shade-pulled down to darkness, and then the last one.
She straightened and looked at the house itself, and turned to the police car's faraway taillights.
He had radioed a message about her, and then he had stalled her with his questions while the message was acted on, the shades pulled down.
Oh come on, girl, you're getting nutty! She looked at the house again. They wouldn't have a radio up there. And what would he have been afraid she'd photograph? An orgy in progress? Call girls from the city? (Or better yet, from right there in Stepford.) ENLARGER REVEALS SHOCKING SECRET. Seemingly diligent housewives, conveniently holding still for lengthy time exposures, were caught Sunday night disporting at the Men's Association house by photographer Nancy Drew Eberhart of Fairview Lane…
Smiling, she crouched to the viewfinder, bettered her framing and tocus, and took three shots of the darkwindowed house-ten seconds, twelve, and fourteen.
She took shots of the post office, and of its bare flagpole silhouetted against moonlit clouds.
She was putting the tripod into the car when the police car came by and slowed. 'Hope they all come out!' the
