The Female Man

“Don’t, mother,” says Jeannine, looking down.

“I don’t mind,” says Mrs. Dadier. “Bless you, I’ve done it often enough.” Listless Jeannine pushes her chair back from the table. “You haven’t finished,” observes Mrs. Dadier, mildly surprised. We have to get out of here. “Well, I don’t—I want to find Bro,” says Jeannine, edging out, “I’ll see you,” and she’s gone. Mrs. Dadier doesn’t smile when there’s nobody there. Mother and daughter wear the same face at times like that—calm and deathly tired—Jeannine idly pulling the heads off weeds at the side of the path with an abstract viciousness completely unconnected with anything going on in her head. Mrs. Dadier finishes the dishes and sighs. That’s done. Always to do again. Jeannine comes to the path around the lake, the great vacation feature of the community, and starts round it, but there seems to be nobody nearby. She had hoped she would find her brother, who was always her favorite. ('My big brother') She sits on the rock by the side of the path, Jeannine the baby. Out in the lake there’s a single canoe with two people in it; Jeannine’s gaze, vaguely resentful, fastens on it for a moment, and then drifts off. Her sister-in-law is worried sick about one of the children; one of those children always has something. Jeannine bangs her knuckles idly on the rock. She’s too sour for a romantic reverie and soon she gets up and walks on. Whoever comes to the lake anyway? Maybe Bro is at home. She retraces her steps and takes a fork off the main path, idling along until the lake, with its crowded fringe of trees and brush, disappears behind her. Eileen Dadier’s youngest, the little girl, appears at the upstairs window for a moment and then vanishes. Bro is behind the cottage, cleaning fish, protecting his sports clothes with a rubber lab apron.

“Kiss me,” says Jeannine. “O.K.?” She leans forward with her arms pulled back to avoid getting fish scales on herself, one cheek offered invitingly. Her brother kisses her. Eileen appears around the corner of the house, leading the boy. “Kiss Auntie,” she says. I’m so glad to see you, Jeannie.”

“Jeannine,” says Jeannine (automatically).

“Just think, Bud,” says Eileen. “She must have got in last night. Did you get in last night?” Jeannine nods. Jeannine’s nephew, who doesn’t like anyone but his father, is pulling furiously at Eileen Dadier’s hand, trying seriously to get his fingers out of hers. Bud finishes cleaning the fish. He wipes his hands methodically on a dish towel which Eileen will have to wash by hand to avoid contaminating her laundry, takes off his coat, and takes his knife and cleaver into the house, from whence comes the sound of running water. He comes out again, drying his hands on a towel

“Oh, baby,” says Eileen Dadier reproachfully to her son, “be nice to Auntie.” Jeannine’s brother takes his son’s hand from his wife. The little boy immediately stops wriggling.

“Jeannie,” he says. “It’s nice to see you.

“When did you get in?

“When are you going to get married?”

IV

I found Jeannine on the clubhouse porch that evening, looking at the moon. She had run away from her family.

“They only want what’s good for you,” I said.

She made a face.

“They love you,” I said.

A low, strangled sound. She was prodding the porch-rail with her hand.

“I think you ought to go and rejoin them, Jeannine,” I said. “Your mother’s a wonderful woman who has never raised her voice in anger all the time you’ve known her. And she brought all of you up and got you all through high school, even though she had to work. Your brother’s a firm, steady man who makes a good living for his wife and children, and Eileen wants nothing more in the world than her husband and her little boy and girl. You ought to appreciate them more, Jeannine.”

“I know,” said Jeannine softly and precisely. Or perhaps she said Oh no.

“Jeannine, you’ll never get a good job,” I said. “There aren’t any now. And if there were, they’d never give them to a woman, let alone a grown-up baby like you. Do you think you could hold down a really good job, even if you could get one? They’re all boring anyway, hard and boring. You don’t want to be a dried-up old spinster at forty but that’s what you will be if you go on like this. You’re twenty-nine. You’re getting old. You ought to marry someone who can take care of you, Jeannine.”

“Don’t care,” said she. Or was it Not fair?

“Marry someone who can take care of you,” I went on, for her own good. “It’s all right to do that; you’re a girl. Find somebody like Bud who has a good job, somebody you can respect; marry him. There’s no other life for a woman, Jeannine; do you want never to have children? Never to have a husband? Never to have a house of your own?” (Brief flash of waxed floor, wife in organdie apron, smiling possessively, husband with roses. That’s hers, not mine.)

“Not Cal.” Ah, hell.

“Now, really, what are you waiting for?” (I was getting impatient.) “Here’s Eileen married, and here’s your mother with two children, and all your old school friends, and enough couples here around the lake to fill it up if they all jumped into it at once; do you think you’re any different? Fancy Jeannine! Refined Jeannine! What do you think you’re waiting for?”

“For a man,” said Jeannine. For a plan. My impression that somebody else had been echoing her was confirmed by a brief cough behind me after these words. But it turned out to be Mr. Dadier, come out to fetch his sister. He took her by the arm and pulled her toward the door. “Come on, Jeannie. We’re going to introduce you to someone.”

Only the woman revealed under the light was not Jeannine. A passerby inside saw the substitution through the doorway and gaped. Nobody else seemed to notice. Jeannine is still meditating by the rail: doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, poor man, rich man; maybe he’ll be tall; maybe he’ll make twenty thou a year; maybe he’ll speak three languages’ and be really sophisticated, maybe. Mister Destiny. Janet, who has none of our notion that a good, dignified, ladylike look will recall the worst of scoundrels to a shrinking consciousness of his having insulted A Lady (that’s the general idea, anyway), has gotten out of Bud Dadier’s hold by twisting his thumb. She is the victim of a natural, but ignorant and unjustified alarm; she thinks that being grabbed is not just a gesture but is altogether out of line. Janet’s prepared for blue murder.

“Huh,” says Bro. He’s about to expostulate. “What are you doing here? Who are you?”

Touch me again and I’ll knock your teeth out!

You can see the blood rush to his face, even in this bad light. That’s what comes of being misunderstood. “Keep a civil tongue in your mouth, young lady!”

Janet jeers.

“You just—” Bud Dadier begins, but Janet anticipates him by vanishing like a soap bubble. What do you think Bud stands for—Buddington? Budworthy? Or “Bud” as in “friend'? He passes his hands over his face—the only thing left of Janet is a raucous screech of triumph which nobody else (except the two of us) can hear. The woman in front of the door is Jeannine. Bro, scared out of his wits, as who wouldn’t be, grabs her.

“Oh, Bro!” says Jeannine reproachfully, rubbing her arm.

“You oughtn’t to be out here alone,” says he. “It looks as if you’re not enjoying yourself. Mother went to great trouble to get that extra ticket, you know.”

’I’m sorry,” says Jeannine penitently. “I just wanted to see the moon.”

“Well, you’ve seen it,” says her brother. “You’ve been out here for fifteen minutes. I ought to tell you, Jeannie, Eileen and Mother and I have been talking about you and we all think that you’ve got to do something with your life. You can’t just go on drifting like this. You’re not twenty any more, you know.”

“Oh, Bro—” says Jeannine unhappily. Why are women so unreasonable? “Of course I want to have a good time,” she says.

“Then come inside and have one.” (He straightens his shirt collar.) “You might meet someone, if that’s what you want to do, and you say that’s what you want.”

“I do,” says Jeannine. You too?