The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories (49 page)

So when the big moment came tonight I was the one with the perfect figure, the perfect walk, the perfect talent, I wowed them in the charm department and … I don’t know, there has just been this guy up here, the All-American Master of Ceremonies; you thought he was kissing my cheek and handing me another bouquet but instead he was whispering in my ear, “ok, sweetie, enough’s enough.” There seems to be something wrong; it turns out I am not reaching you wonderful people out there, my subjects. You can see my lips moving but that’s not me you hear on the PA system, it’s a prerecorded speech. He says … he says I’m perfect in almost every respect but there’s this one thing wrong, they found out too late so they’re going to have to go through with it. I guess they found out when I got up here and tried to make this speech. I am a weeny bit too frank to be a typical Miss Wonderful Land of Ours, he says I have too many regrets, but just as soon as I get down from here and they run the last commercial, they’re going to take care of that. He says I’ll be ready to begin my nationwide personal appearance tour in behalf of the product just as soon as they finish the lobotomy.

—
Bad Moon Rising
, Thomas M. Disch ed., 1973

Songs of War

For some weeks now a fire had burned day and night on a hillside just beyond the town limits; standing at her kitchen sink, Sally Hall could see the smoke rising over the trees. It curled upward in promise but she could not be sure what it promised, and despite the fact that she was contented with her work and her family, Sally found herself stirred by the bright autumn air, the smoke emblem.

Nobody seemed to want to talk much about the fire, or what it meant. Her husband, Zack, passed it off with a shrug, saying it was probably just another commune. June Goodall, her neighbor, said it was coming from Ellen Ferguson’s place; she owned the land and it was her business what she did with it. Sally said what if she had been taken prisoner. Vic Goodall said not to be ridiculous, if Ellen Ferguson wanted those people off her place, all she had to do was call the police and get them off, and in the meantime it was nobody’s business.

Still there was something commanding about the presence of the fire; the smoke rose steadily and could be seen for miles, and Sally, working at her drawing board, and a number of other women, going about their daily business, found themselves yearning after the smoke column with complex feelings. Some may have been recalling a primal past in which men conked large animals and dragged them into camp, and the only housework involved was a little gutting before they roasted the bloody chunks over the fire. The grease used to sink into the dirt and afterward the diners, smeared with blood and fat, would roll around in a happy tangle. Other women were stirred by all the adventure tales they had stored up from childhood; people would run away without even bothering to pack or leave a note, they always found food one way or another and they met new friends in the woods. Together they would tell stories over a campfire, and when they had eaten they would walk away from the bones to some high excitement that had nothing to do with the business of living from day to day. A few women, thinking of Castro and his happy guerrilla band, in the carefree, glamorous days before he came to power, were closer to the truth. Thinking wistfully of campfire camaraderie, of everybody marching together in a common cause, they were already dreaming of revolution.

Despite the haircut and the cheap suit supplied by the Acme Vacuum
Cleaner company, Andy Ellis was an underachiever college dropout who could care less about vacuum cleaners. Until this week he had been a beautiful, carefree kid and now, with a dying mother to support, with the wraiths of unpaid bills and unsold MarvelVacs trailing behind him like Marley’s chains, he was still beautiful, which is why the women opened their doors to him.

He was supposed to say, “Good morning, I’m from the Acme Vacuum Cleaner company and I’m here to clean your living room, no obligation, absolutely free of charge.” Then, with the room clean and the Marvelsweep attachment with twenty others and ten optional features spread all over the rug, he was supposed to make his pitch.

The first woman he called on said he did good work but her husband would have to decide, so Andy sighed and began collecting the Flutesnoot, the Miracle Whoosher and all the other attachments and putting them back into the patented Bomb Bay Door.

“Well thanks anyway …”

“Oh, thank
you
,” she said. He was astounded to discover that she was unbuttoning him here and there.

“Does this mean you want the vacuum after all?”

She covered him with hungry kisses. “Shut up and deal.”

At the next house, he began again. “Good morning, I’m from the Acme Vacuum Cleaner company …”

“Never mind that. Come in.”

At the third house, he and the lady of the house grappled in the midst of her unfinished novel, rolling here and there between the unfinished tapestry and the unfinished wire sculpture.

“If he would let me alone for a minute I would get some of these things done,” she said. “All he ever thinks about is sex.”

“If you don’t like it, why are we doing this?”

“To get even,” she said.

On his second day as a vacuum cleaner salesman, Andy changed his approach. Instead of going into his pitch, he would say, “Want to screw?” By the third day he had refined it to, “My place or yours?”

Friday his mother died so he was able to turn in his MarvelVac, which he thought was just as well, because he was exhausted and depressed, and, for all his efforts, he had made only one tentative sale, which was contingent upon his picking up the payments in person every week for the next twelve years. Standing over his mother’s coffin, he could not for the life of him understand what had happened to women—not good old Mom, who had more or less liked her family and at any rate had died uncomplaining—but the others, all
the women in every condition in all the houses he had gone to this week. Why weren’t any of them happy?

Up in the hills, sitting around the fire, the women in the vanguard were talking about just that; the vagaries of life, and woman’s condition. They had to think it was only that. If they were going to go on, they would have to be able to decide the problem was X, whatever X was. It had to be something they could name, so that, together, they could do something about it.

They were of a mind to free themselves. One of the things was to free themselves of the necessity of being thought of as sexual objects, which turned out to mean only that certain obvious concessions, like lipstick and pretty clothes, had by ukase been done away with. Still, there were those who wore their khakis and bandoliers with a difference. Whether or not they shaved their legs and armpits, whether or not they smelled, the pretty ones were still pretty and the others were not; the ones with good bodies walked in an unconscious pride and the others tried to ignore the differences and settled into their flesh, saying: Now, we are all equal.

There were great disputes as to what they were going to do and which things they would do first. It was fairly well agreed that although the law said that they were equal, nothing much was changed. There was still the monthly bleeding. Dr. Ora Fessenden, the noted gynecologist, had showed them a trick which was supposed to take care of all that, but nothing short of surgery or menopause would halt the process altogether; what man had to undergo such indignities? There was still pregnancy, but the women all agreed they were on top of that problem. That left the rest; men still looked down on them, in part because in the main, women were shorter; they were more or less free to pursue their careers, assuming they could keep a babysitter, but there were still midafternoon depressions, dishes, the wash; despite all the changes, life was much the same. More drastic action was needed.

They decided to form an army.

At the time, nobody was agreed on what they were going to do or how they would go about it, but they were all agreed that it was time for a change. Things could not go on as they were; life was often boring, and too hard.

The youngest housewife watched the smoke, thinking hard. Then she wrote a note:

Dear Ralph,

I am running away to realize my full potential. I know you have always said I could do anything I want but what you meant was, I could do anything
as long as it didn’t mess you up, which is not exactly the same thing now, is it? Don’t bother to look for me.

No longer yours,

Lory

Then she went to join the women in the hills.

I would like to go
, Suellen thought,
but what if they wouldn’t let me have my baby?

Jolene’s uncle in the country always had a liver-colored setter named Fido. The name remained the same and the dogs were more or less interchangeable. Jolene called all her lovers Mike, and because they were more or less interchangeable, eventually she tired of them and went to join the women in the hills.

“You’re not going,” Herb Chandler said.

Annie said, “I am.”

He grabbed her as she reached the door. “The hell you are, I need you.”

“You don’t need me, you need a maid.” She slapped the side of his head. “Now let me go.”

“You’re mine,” he said, aiming a karate chop at her neck. She wriggled and he missed.

“Just like your ox and your ass, huh.” She had gotten hold of a lamp and she let him have it on top of the head.

“Ow,” he said, and crumpled to the floor.

“Nobody owns me,” she said, throwing the vase of flowers she kept on the side table, just for good measure. “I’ll be back when it’s over.” Stepping over him, she went out the door.

After everybody left that morning, June mooned around the living room, picking up the scattered newspapers, collecting her and Vic’s empty coffee cups and marching out to face the kitchen table, which looked the same way every morning at this time, glossy with spilled milk and clotted cereal, which meant that she had to go through the same motions every morning at this time, feeling more and more like that jerk, whatever his name was, who for eternity kept on pushing the same recalcitrant stone up the hill; he was never going to get it to the top because it kept falling back on him and she was never going to get to the top, wherever that was, because there would always be the kitchen table, and the wash, and the crumbs on the rug, and besides she didn’t know where
the top was because she had gotten married right after Sweetbriar and the next minute, bang, there was the kitchen table and, give or take a few babies, give or take a few stabs at night classes in something or other, that seemed to be her life. There it was in the morning, there it was again at noon, there it was at night; when people said, at parties, “What do you do?” she could only move her hands helplessly because there was no answer she could give that would please either herself or them.
I clean the kitchen table
, she thought, because there was no other way to describe it.

Occasionally she thought about running away but where would she go, and how would she live? Besides, she would miss Vic and the kids and her favorite chair in the television room. Sometimes she thought she might grab the milkman or the next delivery boy, but she knew she would be too embarrassed, either that or she would start laughing, or the delivery boy would, and even if they didn’t she would never be able to face Vic. She thought she had begun to disappear, like the television or the washing machine; after a while nobody would see her at all. They might complain if she wasn’t working properly, but in the main she was just another household appliance, and so she mooned, wondering if this was all there was ever going to be: herself in the house, the kitchen table.

JOIN NOW

It was in the morning mail, hastily mimeographed and addressed to her by name. If she had been in a different mood she might have tossed it out with the rest of the junk mail, or called a few of her friends to see if they’d gotten it too. As it was, she read it through, chewing over certain catchy phrases in this call to arms, surprised to find her blood quickening. Then she packed and wrote her note:

Dear Vic,

There are clean sheets on all the beds and three casseroles in the freezer and one in the oven. The veal one should do for two meals. I have done all the wash and a thorough vacuuming. If Sandy’s cough doesn’t get any better you should take him in to see Dr. Weixelbaum, and don’t forget Jimmy is supposed to have his braces tightened on the 12th. Don’t look for me.