She had walked over to Fifth Avenue and taken a cab downtown to 38th Street and Fifth. She walked from that corner to her apartment house. She felt no fear alone on the street. Her life could have ended at that moment and it would have been worthwhile. That was how she felt.
Locked and chained inside her own apartment, she had showered (the third time that day). She replaced all her secret things in their secret places. She pushed the damp towel deep into the plastic bag in her garbage can, to be thrown into the incinerator in the morning.
She hadn't been aware of her menstrual cramps for hours and hours. But now she began to feel the familiar pains, gripping with increasing intensity. She inserted a tampon and swallowed a Midol, two Anacin, a vitamin B- complex capsule, a vitamin C tablet, and ate half a container of blueberry yogurt.
Just before she got into bed, she shook a Pulvule 304 from her jar of prescription Tuinal and gulped it down.
She slept like a baby.
During the month that followed, Zoe Kohler had the sense of her ordered life whirling apart. She was conscious of an accelerated passage of time. Days flashed, and even weeks seemed condensed, so that Fridays succeeded Mondays, and it was an effort to recall what had happened between.
Increasingly, the past intruded on the present. She found herself thinking more and more of her marriage, her husband, mother, father, her girlhood. She spent one evening trying to remember the names of friends who had attended her 13th birthday party, and writing them down.
The party had been a disaster. Partly because several invited guests had not shown up, nor bothered to phone apologies. And partly because her periods had started on that day. She had begun to bleed, and was terrified. She thought it would never stop, and saw herself as an emptied sack of wrinkled white skin.
Ernest Mittle phoned her at home a week after their meeting. She hadn't expected him to call, as he had promised-men never did-and it took her a moment to bring him to mind.
'I hope I'm not disturbing you,' he said.
'Oh no,' she said. 'No.'
'How are you, Zoe?'
'Very well, thank you. And you?'
'Just fine,' he said in his light, boyish voice. 'I was hoping that if you didn't have any plans for tomorrow night, we might have 1 dinner and see a movie, or something.'
'I'm sorry,' she said quickly. 'I do have plans.'
He said he was disappointed and would try again. They chatted | awkwardly for a few minutes and then hung up. She stared at the dead, black phone.
'Don't be too eager, Zoe,' her mother had instructed firmly. 'Don't let men get the idea that you're anxious or easy.'
She didn't know if it was her mother's teaching or her own lack of inclination, but she wasn't certain she wanted to see Ernest Mittle again. If she did, it would just be something to do.
He did call again, and this time she accepted his invitation. It was for Saturday night, which she took as a good omen. New York men dated second or third choices during the week. Saturday night was for favorites: an occasion.
Ernest Mittle insisted on meeting her in the lobby of her apartment house. From there, they took a cab to a French restaurant on East 60th Street where he had made a reservation. The dining room was warm, cheerfully decorated, crowded.
Relaxing there, smoking a cigarette, sipping her white wine, listening to the chatter of other diners, Zoe Kohler felt for a moment that she was visible and belonged in the world.
After dinner, they walked over to 60th Street and Third Avenue. But there was a long line before the theater showing the movie he wanted to see. He looked at her, dismayed.
'I don't want to wait,' he said. 'Do you?'
'Not really,' she said. And then, without considering it, she added: 'Why don't we go back to my apartment and watch TV, or just talk?'
Something happened to his face: a quick twist. But then he was the eager spaniel again, anxious to please, his smile hopeful. He seemed constantly prepared to apologize.
'That sounds just fine,' he said.
'I'm afraid I have nothing to drink,' she said.
'We'll stop and pick up a couple of bottles of white wine,' he said. 'All right?'
'One will be plenty,' she assured him.
They had exhausted remembrances of their youth in Minnesota and Wisconsin. They had no more recollections to exchange. Now, tentatively, almost fearfully, their conversation became more personal. They explored a new relationship, feinting, pulling back, trying each other, ready to escape. Both stiff with shyness and embarrassment.
In her apartment, she served the white wine with ice cubes. He sat in an armchair, his short legs thrust out. He was wearing a vested tweed suit, a tattersall shirt with a knitted tie. He seemed laden and bowed with the weight of his clothing, made smaller and frail. He had tiny feet.
She sat curled into a corner of the living room couch, her shoes off, legs pulled up under her gray flannel jumper. She felt remarkably at ease. No tension. He did not frighten her. If she had said, 'Go,' he would have gone, she was certain.
'Why haven't you married?' she asked him suddenly, thinking he might be gay.
'Who'd have me?' he said, showing his small white teeth. 'Besides, Zoe, there isn't the pressure to marry anymore. There are all kinds of different lifestyles. More and more single-person households every year.'
'I suppose,' she said vaguely.
'Are you into the women's movement?'
'Not really,' she said. 'I don't know much about it.'
'I don't either,' he said. 'But what I've read seems logical and reasonable.'
'Some of those women are so-so loud and crude,' she burst out.
'Oh my, yes,' he said hurriedly. 'That's true.'
'They just-just push so,' she went on. 'They call themselves feminists, but I don't think they're very feminine.'
'You're so right,' he said.
'I think that, first and foremost, women should be ladies. Don't you? I mean, refined and gentle. Low-voiced and modest in her appearance. That's what I was always taught. Clean and well-groomed. Generous and sympathetic.'
'I was brought up to respect women,' he said.
'That's what my mother told me-that men will always respect you if you act like a lady.'
'Is your mother still alive?' he asked.
'Oh yes.'
'She sounds like a wonderful woman.'
'She is,' Zoe said fervently, 'she really is. She's over sixty now, but she's very active in her bridge club and her garden club and her book club. She reads all the best-sellers. And she's in charge of the rummage sales at the church. She certainly does keep busy.
'What I mean is that she doesn't just sit at home and do housecleaning and cook. She has a life of her own. That doesn't mean she doesn't take care of Father; she does. But goodness, he's not her entire life. She's a very independent woman.'
'That's marvelous,' Ernest said, 'that she finds so much of interest to do.'
'You should see her,' Zoe said. 'She looks much younger than her age. She has her hair done every week, a blue rinse, and she dresses just so. She's got wonderful taste in clothes. She's immaculate. Not a hair out of place. She's a little overweight now, but she stands just as straight as ever.'
'Sounds like a real lady,' he said.
'Oh, she is. A real lady.'
Then Ernest Mittle began to talk about his mother, who seemed to be a woman much like Zoe had described. After a while she heard his voice as a kind of drone. She was conscious of what he was saying. She kept her eyes
