oppressive.'
Joanna turned to her.
'Will you think about it for a day or two and call me?' Dr. Fancher said.
'I'm sure I can help you. It's certainly worth a few hours' exploration, isn't it?'
Joanna sat still, and nodded.
Dr. Fancher took a pen from its holder and wrote on a prescription pad.
Joanna looked at her. She stood up and took her handbag from the desk.
'These will help you in the meantime,' Dr. Fancher said, writing.
'They're a mild tranquilizer. You can take three a day.' She tore off a slip and offered it to Joanna, smiling. 'They won't make you fascinated with housework,' she said.
Joanna took the slip.
Dr. Fancher stood up. 'I'll be away Christmas week,' she said, 'but we could start the week of the third. Will you call me Monday or Tuesday and let me know what you've decided?'
Joanna nodded.
Dr. Fancher smiled. 'It's not catastrophic,' she said. 'Really, I'm sure I can help you.' She held out her hand.
Joanna shook it and went out.
THE LIBRARY WAS BUSY. Miss Austrian said they were down in the cellar. The door on the left, the bottom shelf. Put them back in their proper order.
No smoking. Put out the lights.
She went down the steep narrow stairs, touching the wall with one hand.
There was no banister.
The door on the left. She found the light switch inside. An eye-sting of fluorescence; the smell of old paper; the whine of a motor, climbing in pitch.
The room was small and low-ceilinged. Walls of shelved magazines surrounded a library table and four kitchen chairs, chrome and red plastic.
Big brown-bound volumes jutted from the bottom shelf all around the room, lying flat, piled six high.
She put her handbag on the table, and took her coat off and laid it over one of the chairs.
She started five years back, leafing backward through the half-a-year volume.
CIVIC AND MEN'S ASSOCIATIONS TO MERGE. The proposed union of the Stepford Civic Association and the Stepford Men's Association has been endorsed by the members of both organizations and will take place within weeks.
Thomas C. Miller III and Dale Coba, the respective presidents…
She leafed back, through Little League ball games and heavy snowfalls, through thefts, collisions, school-bond disputes.
WOMEN'S CLUB SUSPENDS MEETINGS. The Stepford Women's Club is suspending its bi-weekly meetings because of declining membership, according to Mrs.
Richard Ockrey, who assumed the club's presidency only two months ago on the resignation of former president Mrs. Alan Hollingsworth. 'It's only a temporary suspension,' Mrs. Ockrey said in her home on Fox Hollow Lane.
'We're planning a full-scale membership drive and a resumption of meetings in the early spring Do tell, Mrs. Ockrey.
She leafed back through ads for old movies and lowpriced food, through fire at the Methodist Church and the opening of the incinerator plant.
MEN'S ASSOCIATION BUYS TERHUNE HOUSE. Dale Coba, president of the Stepford…
A zoning-law change, a burglary at CompuTech.
She dropped the next-earlier volume down onto the other one. Sitting, she opened the volume at its back.
LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS MAY CLOSE.
So what's so surprising about that?
Unless the recent fall-off in membership is reversed, the Stepford League of Women Voters may be forced to close its doors. So warns the league's new president, Mrs. Theodore Van Sant of Fairview Lane…
Carol?
Back, back.
A drought was relieved, a drought grew worse.
MEN'S ASSOCIATION RE-ELECTS COBA. Dale Coba of Anvil Road was elected by acclamation to a second two-year term as president of the steadily expanding…
Back two years then.
She jumped three volumes.
A theft, a fire, a bazaar, a snowfall.
She flipped up the pages with one hand, turned them with the other; quickly, quickly.
MEN'S ASSOCIATION FORMED. A dozen Stepford men who repaired the disused barn on Switzer Lane and have been meeting in it for over a year, have formed the Stepford Men's Association and will welcome new members. Dale Coba of Anvil Road has been elected president of the association, Duane T. Anderson of Switzer Lane is vice-president, and Robert Sumner Jr. of Gwendolyn Lane is secretary-treasurer. The purpose of the association, Mr. Coba says, is 'strictly social-poker, man-talk, and the pooling of information on crafts and hobbies.' The Coba family seems especially apt at getting things started; Mrs. Coba was among the founders of the Stepford Women's Club, although she recently withdrew from it, as did Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Sumner. Other men in the Stepford Men's Association are Claude Axhelm, Peter J. Duwicki, Frank Ferretti, Steven Margolies, Ike Mazzard, Frank Roddenberry, James J. Scofield, Herbert Sundersen, and Martin I. Weiner. Men interested in further information should…
She jumped two more volumes, and now she turned pages in whole-issue clusters, finding each 'Notes on Newcomers' in its page-two box.
… Mr. Ferretti is an engineer in the systems development laboratory of the CompuTech Corporation.
… Mr. Sumner, who holds many patents in dyes and plastics, recently joined the A meriChem- Willis Corporation, where he is doing research in vinyl polymers.
'Notes on Newcomers,'
'Notes on Newcomers'; stopping only when she saw one of the names, skipping to the end of the article, telling herself she was right, she was right.
… Mr. Duwicki, known to his friends as Wick, is in the Instatron Corporation's microcircuitry department.
… Mr. Weiner is with the Sono-Trak division of the Instatron Corporation.
… Mr. Margolies is with Reed amp; Saunders, the makers of stabilizing devices whose new plant on Route Nine begins operation next week.
She put volumes back, took other volumes out, dropping them heavily on the table.
… Mr. Roddenberry is associate chief of the CompuTech Corporation's systems development laboratory.
… Mr. Sundersen designs optical sensors for Ulitz Optics, Inc.
And finally she found it.
She read the whole article.
New neighbors on Anvil Road are Mr. and Mrs. Dale Coba and their sons Dale Jr., four, and Darren, two. The Cobas have come here from Anaheim, California, where they lived for six years. 'So far we like this part of the country,' Mrs. Coba says. 'I don't know how we'll feel when winter comes. We're not used to cold weather.'
Mr. and Mrs. Coba attended U.C.L.A., and Mr. Coba did postgraduate work at the California Institute of Technology. For the past six years he worked in 'audioanimatronics' at Disneyland, helping to create the moving and talking presidential figures featured in the August number of National Geographic. His hobbies are hunting and piano-playing. Mrs.
Coba, who majored in languages, is using her spare time to write a translation of the classic Norwegian novel The Commander's Daughters.
Mr. Coba's work here will probably be less attention getting than his work at Disneyland; he has joined the
