properly would be more than she could afford. There’s a pile of home-decorating magazines in the back of the closet, although that was only a temporary thing; the thought doesn’t really recur to her much. Cal doesn’t understand about such things. Tall, dark, and handsome? She refused her lover? the noble thing to . ? mimosa and jasmine? She thinks how it would be to be a mermaid and decorate a merhouse with seaweed and slices of pearl. The Mermaid’s Companion. The Mermaid’s Home Journal. She giggles. She finishes packing her clothes, taking out a pair of shoes to polish them with a bottle of neutral polish, because you have to be careful with the light colors. As soon as they dry, they’ll go back in the valise. Trouble is, though, the valise is bloody well falling apart at the seams. Cal, when he comes, will find her reading Mademoiselle Mermaid about the new fish-scale look for eyes.
Why does she keep having these dreams about Whileaway?
While-away. While. A. Way. To While away the time. That means it’s just a pastime. If she tells Cal about it, he’ll say she’s nattering again; worse still, it would sound pretty silly; you can’t expect a man to listen to everything (as everybody’s Mother said). Jeannine gets dressed in blouse, sweater, and skirt for her brother’s place in the country, while in the valise she puts: a pair of slacks to go berrying in, another blouse, a scarf, underwear, stockings, a jacket (No, I’ll carry it), her hairbrush, her makeup, face cream, sanitary napkins, a raincoat, jewelry for the good dress, hair clips, hair curlers, bathing suit, and a light every-day dress. Oof, too heavy! She sits down again, discouraged. Little things make Jeannine blue. What’s the use of cleaning a place over and over again if you can’t make something of it? The ailanthus tree nods to her from outside the window. (And why won’t Cal protect her against anything? She deserves protection.) Maybe she’ll meet somebody. Nobody knows—O nobody knows really—what’s in Jeannine’s heart (she thinks). But somebody will see. Somebody will understand. Remember the hours in California under the fig tree. Jeannine in her crisp plaid dress, the hint of fall in the air, the blue haze over the hills like smoke. She hauls at the valise again, wondering desperately what it is that other women know and can do that she doesn’t know or can’t do, women in the street, women in the magazines, the ads, married women. Why life doesn’t match the stories. I ought to get married . (But not to Cal!) She’ll meet someone on the bus; she’ll sit next to someone. Who knows why things happen? Jeannine, who sometimes believes in astrology, palmistry, occult signs, who knows that certain things are fated or not fated, knows that men—in spite of everything—have no contact with or understanding of the insides of things. That’s a realm that’s denied them. Women’s magic, women’s intuition rule here, the subtle deftness forbidden to the clumsier sex. Jeannine is on very good terms with her ailanthus tree. Without having to reflect on it, without having to work at it, they both bring into human life the breath of magic and desire. They merely embody. Mr. Frosty, knowing he’s going to be left at a neighbor’s for the week, has been hiding behind the couch; now he crawls out with a piece of dust stuck on his left eye-tuft, looking very miserable. Jeannine has no idea what drove him out “Bad cat!” There was something about her . She watches the blotchy-skinny-cat (as Cal calls him) sneak to his milk dish and while Mr. Frosty laps it up, Jeannine grabs him. She gets the collar around his neck while Mr. Frosty struggles indignantly, and then she snaps the leash on. In a few minutes he’ll forget he’s confined. He’ll take the collar for granted and start daydreaming about sumptuous mice. There was something unforgettable about her? She ties him to a bed post and pauses, catching sight of herself in the wall mirror: flushed, eyes sparkling, her hair swept back as if by some tumultuous storm, her whole face glowing. The lines of her figure are perfect, but who is to use all this loveliness, who is to recognize it, make it public, make it available? Jeannine is not available to Jeannine. She throws her jacket over one arm, more depressed than otherwise. I wish I had money? “Don’t worry,” she tells the cat. “Somebody’s coming for you.” She arranges her jacket, her valise, and her pocketbook, and turns off the light, shutting the door behind her (it latches itself). If only (she thinks) he’ll come and show me to myself .
I’ve been waiting for you so long. How much longer must I wait?
Nights and nights alone. ('You can’t,” says the stairwell. “You can’t,” says the street.) A fragment of old song drifts through her mind and lingers behind her in the stairwell, her thoughts lingering there, too, wishing that she could be a mermaid and float instead of walk, that she were someone else and so could watch herself coming down the stairs, the beautiful girl who composes everything around her to harmony:
Somebody lovely has just passed by.
I live between worlds. Half the time I like doing housework, I care a lot about how I look, I warm up to men and flirt beautifully (I mean I really admire them, though I’d die before I took the initiative; that’s men’s business), I don’t press my point in conversations, and I enjoy cooking. I like to do things for other people, especially male people. I sleep well, wake up on the dot, and don’t dream. There’s only one thing wrong with me:
I’m frigid.
In my other incarnation I live out such a plethora of conflict that you wouldn’t think I’d survive, would you, but I do; I wake up enraged, go to sleep in numbed despair, face what I know perfectly well is condescension and abstract contempt, get into quarrels, shout, fret about people I don’t even know, live as if I were the only woman in the world trying to buck it all, work like a pig, strew my whole apartment with notes, articles, manuscripts, books, get frowsty, don’t care, become stridently contentious, sometimes laugh and weep within five minutes together out of pure frustration. It takes me two hours to get to sleep and an hour to wake up. I dream at my desk. I dream all over the place. I’m very badly dressed.
But O how I relish my victuals! And O how I fuck!
Jeannine has an older brother who’s a mathematics teacher in a New York high school. Their mother, who stays with him during vacations, was widowed when Jeannine was four. When she was a little baby Jeannine used to practice talking; she would get into a corner by herself and say words over and over again to get them right. Her first full sentence was, “See the moon.” She pressed wildflowers and wrote poems in elementary school. Jeannine’s brother, her sister-in-law, their two children, and her mother live for the summer in two cottages near a lake. Jeannine will stay in the smaller one with her mother. She conies downstairs with me behind her to find Mrs. Dadier arranging flowers in a pickle jar on the kitchenette table. I am behind Jeannine, but Jeannine can’t see me, of course.
“Everyone’s asking about you,” says Mrs. Dadier, giving her daughter a peck on the cheek.
“Mm,” says Jeannine, still sleepy. I duck behind the bookshelves that separate the living room from the kitchenette.
“We thought you might bring that nice young man with you again,” says Mrs. Dadier, setting cereal and milk in front of her daughter. Jeannine retreats into sulky impassivity. I make an awful face, which of course nobody sees.
“We’ve separated,” says Jeannine, untruly.
“Why?” says Mrs. Dadier, her blue eyes opening wide. “What was the matter with him?”
He was impotent, mother. Now how could I say that to such a nice lady? I didn’t.
“Nothing,” says Jeannine. “Where’s Bro?”
“Fishing,” says Mrs. Dadier. Brother often goes out in the early morning and meditates over a fishing line. The ladies don’t. Mrs. Dadier is afraid of his slipping, falling on a rock, and splitting open his head. Jeannine doesn’t like fishing.
“We’re going to have a nice day,” says Mrs. Dadier. “There’s a play tonight and a block dance. There are lots of young people, Jeannine.” With her perpetually fresh smile Mrs. Dadier clears off the table where her daughter-in- law and the two children have breakfasted earlier; Eileen has her hands full with the children.
