Stepping Read online

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  Last year, last fall, after the peacemaking summer visit from Charlie’s girls, we received our first unexpected letter from Caroline. It was a long, friendly, chatty letter, written to both of us, telling about Caroline’s new apartment and her three girlfriends and how hard her courses were and whom she was dating. There was no request for money. And the last sentence was: “Hope you two and the children are fine. Love, Caroline.”

  Charlie was happy. “I knew this would happen eventually,” he said. “She wants to get back in touch again. She’s grown up a bit. The worst of it is over, thank God.”

  He wrote back to Caroline, and after a while, I wrote, too. My letter was shorter, more cautious, and I mentioned Adam and Lucy only briefly. I realized how dull my letter might sound to a college girl; I wrote only about the farm, and our new kittens, and how many apples I had managed to slice and freeze or make into applesauce and apple cider. I longed to say in the letter, “Look, this is just a phase I’m going through, motherhood and calm farm life; it doesn’t make me very interesting, I know, but it makes me quite content. You went through a phase, God knows; I deserve to go through one, too.” As I wrote the letter, I knew that the farm, my children, my gentle, calm, safe plodding life, would not satisfy me much longer.

  Caroline wrote back another long, friendly letter. She said that Cathy said hi. We wrote back to Caroline. Several letters were exchanged between us, and suddenly it was Christmas and both girls came up to spend two days of their Christmas vacation with us.

  It was a good visit. There were no enthusiastic hugs and kisses, in fact there was no touching at all, and we were all rather reserved, rather careful. But we ate and drank and laughed and talked together. The girls helped me clear off the table without waiting for me to ask. They smiled and said thank you when they opened their presents. They even brought little presents for Adam and Lucy, and although they did not hold either child, they did talk to them a bit, they did smile at them. It was as if a storm were over, as if a nightmare had ended. By the end of their two days there, we were almost comfortable with each other.

  In February, Caroline wrote to ask if Charlie and I could come down to New Haven to visit. It was her last year of college, and she wanted to show us her apartment and her roommates before everything changed. She had mentioned that she wanted us to come down during the Christmas visit, but we had thought she was perhaps only being polite. Now she seemed to be seriously, honestly inviting us.

  “I can’t go down,” Charlie said. “I just don’t have the time. Why don’t you go?”

  “Me? Alone? She doesn’t want me, she wants you, you’re her father, for heaven’s sake,” I said.

  But later, when Charlie called Caroline to tell her that he was too busy to go down for even an overnight visit, Caroline said, “Well, then, can Zelda come?”

  “Well, then, can Zelda come?”

  Those were the words Caroline said, and those five simple words made my heart jump up in my throat and made tears spring to my eyes. “She wants me to come,” I whispered to the air, as if saying it aloud, repeating it, made it more believable, more real. It was then, when I realized how happy I was that Caroline wanted me to come, that I also realized how sad I had been, in some hidden part of my heart, not to be part of her life, not to have her as part of mine.

  I went. It was a great trip, for many reasons. It was the first time I had ever been away from Adam and Lucy and Charlie. Charlie and I had managed to squeeze out a weekend here and there to go down to New York to see a play and visit friends, and of course Charlie had gone off to his everlasting conferences many times, leaving me alone with Adam and Lucy. But now it was my turn: I was going on a trip by myself, without husband or children. I packed like a bride, took a new thick juicy paperback to read on the bus down, bought Caroline and Cathy new shirts, and took enough cash to buy plenty of wine and beer.

  How free I felt as I stepped off the bus in New Haven! It was intoxicating simply to stand there, without having to lift a baby or push a stroller or answer a high-pitched question. And when I saw Caroline in her jeans and down jacket coming toward me, I felt young again for the first time in years.

  That night, Friday night, the girls drove me to the dorm, so that I could see Cathy’s room and meet her roommate, and then we stopped at a liquor store and bought beer, wine, vodka, scotch, tonic, and soda, so that everyone would be happy, and then we went to Caroline’s apartment and had a great drunken dinner party. One roommate had cooked the appetizers, one had done the salad, one the meat, one the desserts. By the time we had gotten to the desserts I was probably too tipsy to taste anything, but even so the food all tasted exquisitely good, perhaps simply because for once I wasn’t fixing it or cleaning up the mess. I did offer to help, but the apartment kitchen was so small that only two people could fit into it at one time, and two of Caroline’s roommates did the dishes, and Caroline and Cathy and I sat and drank.

  I loved the apartment. It was like a three-dimensional collage; so many diversely colored and designed pieces were thrown into it by the four roommates to make a bright, gay room. There was the usual cheap ugly green Salvation Army sofa, but it was covered by an afghan knitted by someone’s mother. There was a purple velvet Chippendale chair and a sleek Danish plastic chair and bright yellow beanbag chair. There were plants hanging everywhere in wonderful macramé hangers, and there were paintings and photographs covering every inch of the wall. There were lewd posters of rock stars, and save-the-ecology posters of whales. Even the bathroom walls were covered—with clipped cartoons and jokes about men, vibrators, women’s lib, sex, college life, unemployment. I could have spent hours in the bathroom alone; I never did manage to read all the jokes.

  We sat in the living room, drinking, talking, laughing. The talk faded like smoke; the next day I could not remember a word of it. About an hour after dinner Cathy’s date for the evening, a tall sexy blond boy named Chris showed up and took her away. Two of Caroline’s other roommates left with dates, and then there were just the three of us, Caroline, I, and the other roommate, Lynn. Lynn had made us tea, which sobered us up a bit, and we talked about courses, grades, the bad job market, the uncertainty of the future. We sank deeper into our chairs.

  Finally I heard myself say, “Is this what you two usually do on a Friday night? Sit at home and get depressed?”

  It turned out that no, they didn’t usually sit at home and get depressed, they were sitting at home on my account; usually they had dates or went out to Louie’s.

  “Louie’s? What’s Louie’s?” I asked.

  Caroline looked mischievous. “You wanna see Louie’s? Hey, you oughta see Louie’s. Come on. It’ll be good for you.”

  So we put on lipstick and got into our coats and went off to Louie’s. It turned out to be a big, dark noisy bar where a live band was playing and kids sat crushed elbow to elbow at tiny rickety tables, drinking cheap beer and overpriced mixed drinks. When we entered, the heat and the noise after the cold calm outdoors hit me like a wall and I had to stand still for a few moments to let my eyes get adjusted. It was, I suppose, any typical bar where college kids hang out, only perhaps a little smokier and a little louder, but then again, it was a Friday night.

  Caroline and Lynn seemed to know their way around, and led me through a maze of legs and tables and moving bodies to what seemed the only available table in the place, one back in the corner against the wall. As I squeezed and slid my way after the girls I noticed that no one in the bar was over thirty, or even close to it. I shrank a bit inside my clothes, wishing I could hide. I felt old, maternal, out of place. I was out of place; how long had it been—years!—since I had been in a bar without my husband. I was glad we were going to a corner table.

  “This is it,” Caroline said to me as we sat down. I chose the chair that was most in the dark. “Look, Lynn,” she went on, “Ed’s over there with Andrea. Can you believe it?”

  “I hope John shows tonight,” Lynn said.

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sp; I listened to Caroline and Lynn gossip about people I didn’t know, people who were not having babies and working on farms and holding down jobs, but who were breaking up with steadies or flunking upper-level courses or wrecking MG’s or going off skiing for the weekend. The waitress finally showed up at our table, and brought us all beers, which I paid for, and then I sat there, suddenly very happy, very content, to be simply sitting there, at Louie’s, listening to my stepdaughter and her friend talk. Caroline had had her hair cut that fall, in a simple Dutch-girl style with bangs. She was wearing jeans and an unmemorable blue jersey, and small gold pierced earrings. She had put blue shadow on her eyes and blusher on her cheeks, but wore no lipstick. She looked sophisticated and very lovely, completely different from the little bucktoothed girl I had first met, the little girl who had been all angles and sharp, breakable places. I wondered if Adelaide had ever come to Louie’s with Caroline; it didn’t seem like a place to bring one’s mother; in a surge of intuition I knew that Caroline would never bring her mother here, just as Lucy, when she grew up, would never want to show up at a bar with her mother. I felt warmed, special, privileged: I was getting to see a part of Caroline’s life that Charlie and Adelaide couldn’t share. I sat there, drinking, getting drunk again, smiling fondly at Caroline, thinking how lovely she was, wondering if I had had any influence at all in her growth.

  “Would you like to dance?”

  The boy said it three times before he got my attention and managed to make me realize he was talking to me.

  Even so I said, “What?” I couldn’t have been more shocked if a frog had dropped into my lap.

  “Would you like to dance?” the boy shouted.

  Through the fog of booze I quickly registered: one tall, dark-haired, good-looking boy, slim, perhaps twenty, leaning on the table, looking at me. I also registered the looks of total surprise on Caroline’s and Lynn’s faces.

  I didn’t know what to do. I felt totally startled and helpless. I looked at Caroline. “I think he asked me to dance with him,” I said.

  “Well, dance with him,” she replied.

  “Okay,” I said to the boy. He turned then, and walked out to the dance floor, and I followed, pushing my way through chairs and warm bodies. My heart was suddenly fluttering insanely, my hands were sweating, and I was afraid that my whole body would break out into one great twitchy tic of nervousness. I thought, all at once, in a rush of horror, I can’t dance with this boy! I’m a mother. I live on a farm. (My God, I’m married.) (My God, that’s my husband’s daughter back there, watching me.) I don’t know how to dance. I’ll make a fool of myself. What do I do? How does one dance? How could this person have asked me to dance; can’t he see I’m old and married? What a good-looking boy!

  Of course I knew how to dance. Charlie and I had danced at parties, and at dances, and I had played the radio and held my children in my arms and danced with them. I had danced to rock music every day in the winter simply to fight off the boredom. I knew how to dance, but out there on the dance floor with a strange boy and Caroline watching I suddenly felt paralyzed. Every movement and gesture seemed difficult and clumsy. If I hadn’t had so much to drink, I wouldn’t have been able to move.

  But I do like to dance. And the music was good and loud, and I had had a lot to drink, and the boy had a super smile, and all of a sudden I was dancing. All of a sudden there I was, wife and mother and farm lady, dancing in a bar in New Haven, Connecticut, with a gorgeous young boy. I was happy. I danced. I loved myself for having worn jeans and a sweater to visit Caroline instead of my dressier slacks.

  I had forgotten how good it felt to dance while smiling at a good-looking stranger.

  “Thank you,” I said politely when the music ended, and started to go back to the table.

  But the boy caught me by my hand; he actually took my hand in his. “Wait,” he said. “They’ll play another in a minute.”

  God forgive me, I believe I giggled. I couldn’t believe this boy was holding my hand. “That’s a married hand you’re holding,” I wanted to say, but fortunately the music did start again, right away, and he let go of my married hand, and we danced.

  We danced for perhaps a half hour without stopping. The boy had a great long back and long, slim legs and his movements were easy and slow and smooth, not frenetic or wild, like some of the others. He had blue eyes, I began to decide, at least they looked blue in the dim light of the dance floor. At first I found it very difficult to look him in the eyes. I kept looking away, feeling somehow embarrassed and guilty, and then I did look him in the eyes, and he smiled, and I smiled, and once that contact was established it seemed too pleasurable to break.

  When the band took intermission they put on some recorded music, but I decided to sit down. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was very much out of breath. The boy followed me back to the table and sat down next to me without being asked. Caroline and Lynn had been dancing, too, and were slowly making their way through the crowd back to the table.

  “It’s wild tonight!” Caroline said happily, and sat down. She lifted her hair up off her neck. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of dancing; she looked terrific.

  “What’s your name?” the boy said to me.

  “What?” I said. I had heard him, but I couldn’t believe the question. It seemed such an odd thing to ask. Also I wasn’t quite sure what to answer. I knew that “Mrs. Campbell” wouldn’t do.

  “Zelda,” I said, and smiled.

  “Zelda?” he asked. “No kidding? Zelda? I’ve never met a Zelda before. What a crazy name! Like Fitzgerald’s wife.”

  “That’s it,” I said. “Yeah, it is a crazy name. My sister’s name is Audrey. My mother liked strange names.” I didn’t say—why didn’t I say?—“and my daughter’s name is Lucy and my son’s name is Adam, and this girl sitting next to me, my stepdaughter, is named Caroline.”

  “My name’s Charles,” the boy said.

  “You’re putting me on,” I said.

  “No, I’m not,” the boy said. He looked surprised. “What’s wrong with Charles? It’s a perfectly normal name.”

  “Does anyone ever call you Charlie?” I asked.

  “Nope. And no one ever calls me Chuck, either. I hate nicknames.”

  I watched him carefully as he spoke. He wasn’t putting me on. It wasn’t a joke. His name really was Charles.

  “This is Caroline,” I said, and motioned toward my stepdaughter, “and this is Lynn.”

  “Hi,” they all said, and looked each other over. Suddenly a new fear hit me: that they would all start discussing where they went to college and what year they were, and I would have to reveal what had somehow become a shameful secret: my old marriedness.

  “I’ve got to go to the john,” I said to Caroline. “Where is it?”

  She told me, and I rose and wound my way toward it. I hoped that by the time I was back the boy Charles would have left the table. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps Caroline would tell Charles who I was, what I was. In the bathroom I began to laugh softly and drunkenly. I was after all having fun. It was after all a good joke, especially on that poor boy. If only he knew how I had to suck in my stretch-marked stomach in order to zip up my jeans! Still, I could see in the dim light of the restroom that I looked good, younger than I really was, with a glow on. I looked happy. I was proud of myself, I admit it, and I was glad that Caroline was there, to see that her boring stepmother was still zippy enough to be asked to dance by a college boy.

  I took my time in the john, hoping the boy would be gone when I got back to my table, and when I did get back to it, the boy was still there, and he had ordered beers for all of us. He and Caroline and Lynn were discussing some current New Haven scandal.

  I slid into my place and sat back and chugged at my beer, hoping for more courage to get through the crazy night.

  “What do you think of Cataloni?” the boy asked, looking at me.

  I stared back. I didn’t know whether he was talking about a person or an Italia
n noodle.

  “She’s from out of town,” Caroline said, and went on talking. I realized then that she wasn’t going to give me away, she wasn’t going to say, “She doesn’t know who Cataloni is because she’s my stepmother and she lives on a farm with her husband and children.” I also realized what a great couple Charles and Caroline would make, the two of them so tall and slim, one so dark, one so fair.

  The music started and Charles asked me to dance again.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “I’d like to finish my beer. Why don’t you dance with Caroline?” There, I thought, I have done my respectable deed. Off you go, you two young lovers.

  “I’ll just wait with you,” Charles said. He leaned back and put his arm around the back of my chair. I looked at him, astonished. He looked at me. He was gorgeous. I smiled. He smiled. It was ridiculous. I was sexually attracted to him, right there in front of my husband’s daughter, and I felt as embarrassed and guilty as if I had just wet my pants. I looked away from Charles, although simply taking my eyes away from his ended a warm pleasure I was beginning to feel. I looked at Caroline. Her face was expressionless: she was staring out at the dance floor, watching for someone, absorbed in her thoughts. At least, I thought, she didn’t seem ashamed of me. A boy came through the crowd to ask her to dance, and she smiled when she saw him, and I realized that she wasn’t all that interested in what I was doing.

  So I danced again with the boy. I danced all night with the boy. With Charles. Not Charlie, my husband; Charles, my twenty-year-old one-night stand. We danced till two-thirty in the morning. We danced to fast music, and we danced to slow music. He held me quite tightly against him, and I thought I would turn into one long drop of sheer pleasure and puddle onto the floor. It felt so good to be in the slim unfamiliar arms of a strange male. After a while I stopped telling myself that this boy could have been a student of mine, I was old enough to be his teacher, and that my stepdaughter was watching. After a while I stopped telling myself anything. I gave myself over to the experience. How very sweet it was.