The Female Man

She will slowly come back to herself. She’ll return to Bud and Eileen and her job of fascinating the latest X. Jeannine, back in the theatre building with Bud and Eileen, looked in the mirror set up over the ticket window so lady spectators could put on their lipstick, and jumped—“Who’s that!”

“Stop it, Jeannie,” said Bud. “What’s the matter with you?” We all looked and it was Jeannine herself, sure enough, the same graceful slouch and thin figure, the same nervous, oblique glance.

“Why, it’s you, darling,” said Eileen, laughing. Jeannine had been shocked right out of her sorrow. She turned to her sister-in-law and said, with unwonted energy, between her teeth: “What do you want out of life, Eileen? Tell me!”

“Oh honey,” said Eileen, “what should I want? I want just what I’ve got.” X came out of the men’s room. Poor fellow. Poor lay figure.

“Jeannie wants to know what life is all about,” said Bud. “What do you think, Frank? Do you have any words of wisdom for us?”

“I think that you are all awful,” said Jeannine vehemently. X laughed nervously. “Well now, I don’t know,” he said.

That’s my trouble, too. My knowledge was taken away from me.

(She remembered the actor in the play and her throat constricted. It hurt, it hurt. Nobody saw, though.)

“Do you think,” she said very low, to X, “that you could know what you wanted, only after a while—I mean, they don’t mean to do it, but life—people—people could confuse things?”

“I know what I want,” said Eileen brightly. “I want to go home and take the baby from Mama. Okay, honey?”

“I don’t mean—” Jeannine began.

“Oh, Jeannie!” said Eileen affectionately, possibly more for X’s benefit than her sister-in-law’s; “Oh, Jeannie!” and kissed her. Bud gave her a peck on the cheek.

Don’t you touch me!

“Want a drink?” said X, when Bud and Eileen had gone.

“I want to know,” said Jeannine, almost under her breath, “what you want out of life and I’m not moving until you tell me.” He stared.

“Come on,” she said. He smiled nervously.

“Well, I’m going to night school. I’m going to finish my B.A. this winter.” (He’s going to night school. He’s going to finish his B.A. Wowie zowie. I’m not impressed.)

“Really?” said Jeannine, in real awe.

“Really,” he said. Score one. That radiant look of gratitude. Maybe she’ll react the same way when he tells her he can ski. In this loveliest and neatest of social interactions, she admires him, he’s pleased with her admiration, this pleasure lends him warmth and style, he relaxes, he genuinely likes Jeannine; Jeannine sees this and something stirs, something hopes afresh. Is he The One? Can he Change Her Life? (Do you know what you want? No. Then don’t complain.) Fleeing from the unspeakableness of her own wishes—for what happens when you find out you want something that doesn’t exist?—Jeannine lands in the lap of the possible. A drowning woman, she takes X’s willing, merman hands; maybe it’s wanting to get married, maybe she’s just waited too long. There’s love; there’s joy—in marriage, and you must take your chances as they come. They say life without love does strange things to you; maybe you begin to doubt love’s existence.

I shouted at her and beat her on the back and on the head; oh I was an enraged and evil spirit there in the theatre lobby, but she continued holding poor X by the hands—little did he know what hopes hung on him as she continued (I say) to hold on to his hands and look into his flattered eyes. Little did she know that he was a water- dweller and would drown her. Little did she know that there was, attached to his back, a drowning machine issued him in his teens along with his pipe and his tweeds and his ambition and his profession and his father’s mannerisms. Somewhere is The One. The solution. Fulfillment. Fulfilled women. Filled full. My Prince. Come. Come away, Death. She stumbles into her Mommy’s shoes, little girl playing house. I could kick her. And X thinks, poor, deceived bastard, that it’s a tribute to him, of all people—as if he had anything to do with it! (I still don’t know whom she saw or thought she saw in the mirror. Was it Janet? Me?) I want to get married.

VIII

Men succeed. Women get married.

Men fail. Women get married.

Men enter monasteries. Women get married.

Men start wars. Women get married.

Men stop them. Women get married.

Dull, dull. (see below)

IX

Jeannine came around to her brother’s house the next morning, just for fun. She had set her hair and was wearing a swanky scarf over the curlers. Both Mrs. Dadier and Jeannine know that there’s nothing in a breakfast nook to make it intrinsically interesting for thirty years; nonetheless Jeannine giggles and twirls the drinking straw in her breakfast cocoa fancifully this way and that. It’s the kind of straw that has a pleated section in the middle like the bellows of a concertina.

“I always liked these when I was a little girl,” Jeannine says.

“Oh my yes, didn’t you,” says Mrs. Dadier, who is sitting with her second cup of coffee before attacking the dishes.

Jeannine gives way to a fit of hysterics.

“Do you remember—?” she cries. “And do you remember—!”

“Heavens, yes,” says Mrs. Dadier. “Don’t I, though.”

They sit, saying nothing.

“Did Frank call?” This is Mrs. Dadier, carefully keeping her voice neutral because she knows how Jeannine hates interference in her own affairs. Jeannine makes a face and then laughs again. “Oh, give him time, Mother,” she says. “It’s only ten o’clock.” She seems to see the funny side of it more than Mrs. Dadier does. “Bro,” says the latter, “was up at five and Eileen and I got up at eight. I know this is your vacation, Jeannine, but in the country —”

“I did get up at eight,” says Jeannine, aggrieved. (She’s lying.) “I did. I walked around the lake. I don’t know why you keep telling me how late I get up; that may have been true a long time ago but it’s certainly not true now, and I resent your saying so.” The sun has gone in again. When Bud isn’t around, there’s Jeannie to watch out for, Mrs. Dadier tries to anticipate her wishes and not disturb her.

“Well, I keep forgetting,” says Mrs. Dadier. “Your silly old mother! Bud says I wouldn’t remember my head if it wasn’t screwed on.” It doesn’t work. Jeannine, slightly sulky, attacks her toast and jam, cramming a piece into her mouth cater-cornered. Jam drops on the table. Jeannine, implacably convicted of getting up late, is taking it out on the table-cloth. Getting up late is wallowing in sin. It’s unforgivable. It’s improper. Mrs. Dadier, with the misplaced courage of the doomed, chooses to ignore the jam stains and get on with the really important question, viz., is Jeannine going to have a kitchenette of her own (although it will really belong to someone else, won’t it) and is she going to be made to get up early, i.e., Get Married. Mrs. Dadier says very carefully and placatingly: