Sol Stein - Other people

I remember when I first discovered Francine got the curse. It was time to tell her the facts of life just as I had Joan and Margaret, but when I did, Francine led me on a bit, pretending she didn't know what I was talking about, and then I learned she'd had it a year earlier without so much as a word to me. The older girls were so dependent on me for things like that. I told Francine she made me feel useless, and she said "No, no" and assured me she did want to hear about the private things from me, so I thought what the hell, and started bravely to explain about intercourse. Francine listened as if she were mesmerized. Or was she putting me on? "You know all about this," I said, and she said, "Please, Mom, tell me about fellatio and cunnilingus." Would you believe that in a thirteen-year-old? Where did she — from the others? Joan? Margaret? I was in a panic until Ned came home. When I told him, he just grinned, and I lost my temper at him.

"Priscilla," he said, "there is absolutely nothing we can do about something she already knows."

Children were discovering our secrets much too soon. I didn't want to give up at least trying to be a mother to Francine. Once, when she was fourteen, still growing taller too fast, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of desertion and panic and told her, "You are my last baby," and she said, "Mother, I am not a baby."

Bereft of my motherhood, I fled upstairs to my bedroom and smothered my face in the pillow to muffle my desperate sobbing at the prospect of being dutyless, jobless, useless, marking time till I would die. I wasn't ready yet for change of life or death, why did I feel pushed, what was the hurry?

I don't remember if I fell asleep for a moment or not. I do remember the stroking of my hair. I turned. Francine was bending over me. With her fingertips she touched the tears in the comers of my eyes, then took my hands in hers, squeezing them, saying, "Mama" — she hadn't called me that in the longest time — "Mama, you are not old."

In truth, I had been childishly tormenting myself and she, at fourteen, was comforting me with reality. Joan and Margaret had grown up without looking back, but Francine was constantly glancing over her shoulder, as it were, to see where I was, where Ned was. No wonder he loved her so. I truly don't think I was jealous of the way Ned treated her as a woman when she was still a girl. I never had doubts about Joan and Margaret finding their places, marriage, children, the right men. But would Francine find someone she could have regard for? At twenty she said she didn't have time to be serious about anyone. At twenty-five she said to me that men were boys. I worried about her. About something happening to her. I didn't think about rape. Though Ned must have, mustn't he?

You've got to fix an image in your mind to visualize a person you haven't met. When I asked my father what Mr. Thomassy looked like, he said he was a very good lawyer! I pictured him dark-skinned and beak-nosed because of his name, not an American look, more like some of the not-quite-Caucasians I see at the U.N., flat cheeks, the kind that don't look slick shaven even in the morning. I imagined him leaning forward a bit, on the balls of his feet, ready to point. At me! Accusingly!

Driving to his office the first time, I got to the address without one wrong move. The place surprised me. It was a two-story professional building, new, in a good section of Ossining, near Briarcliff; from the way Dad had talked about Mr. Thomassy I had expected it to be a kind of nondescript store-front, walk-in sort of building. The directory in the lobby listed two doctors, a dentist, a real estate agent, and George Thomassy, attorney-at-law, by appointment only.

My appointment was for four o'clock and I turned the knob of the door to the outer office seconds before four. The reception room made you feel you were passing from a contemporary building into another world of paneled walls, subdued lighting, and heavy carpeting that had been put down a long time ago. At the left rear corner was the secretary's desk — I guessed she was his secretary — and she said, "Good afternoon, you must be Miss Widmer," and I thought Do I look like my father ?

"I have an appointment," I said, which was a ridiculous thing to say since she knew who I was and there wasn't anybody else waiting.

"He'll be with you in a minute," said the secretary, glancing at her phone, "he's just finishing up a call."

I sat down on one of the brown leather chairs with brass upholstery nails. On the table in front of me lay an old National Geographic , a copy of The New Yorker that was falling apart, and some comic books. Who brought children along to waiting rooms like this?

When I looked up Thomassy was standing framed in the inner office door, watching me thumb through the comic books, Jesus! I felt like I'd been caught playing with myself. I stood up, put out a dumb hand to shake his outstretched hand, blushing. He didn't look at all like my conjuration of him; he was tall, lean, relaxed-limbed, loose, clean shaven, straight-nosed — no Arab, Greek, Turk, Armenian, whatever — firm, warm hand, and his grey eyes aimed straight at my eyes as he said, "Come in, Miss Widmer."

Those were the first words I ever heard from him and dozens of times since they have skimmed through my head, the mind-cutting bass rumbles of Come in, Miss Widmer , echoing again and again.

He stood aside to let me enter the inner office first. I was careful not to brush against him.

His desk near the window was cluttered with books, file folders, loose papers. In front of it was a brown leather armchair facing a matching couch. The rest was all bookshelves, closing the walls in around the cramped space.

He gestured me into the armchair, dropped into the couch opposite me, our knees almost touching. I was glad he didn't sit behind that desk. I can't stand it when men sit behind desks for the phoney authority it gives them. But I was unprepared to be so close physically to a man I didn't know.

"What do you do when you have a crowd?" I said.

He smiled. "I like to see people one or two at a time. There are folding chairs in the closet for emergencies."

"Do you have emergencies often?" I asked, glad to keep the real conversation from starting.

"My clients have emergencies."

He was examining me with those grey eyes. Was he thinking I looked like my father? Right now he's noticing I don't wear a bra.

The sun from the window was in my eyes. He got up, avoiding my knees, drew the blind just enough to block the offending rays.

"Thank you," I said.

"You seem," he said, "less…" His voice trailed off.

"Less?"

"Less upset than I thought you might be. You seem…"

I waited.

"Calm."

You expect me to be shrill .

"Have you seen the police?"

"Yes."

"Were they helpful?"

"No." They were impossible.

"You're seeing an analyst, a Dr. Koch?"

"Yes."

"What does he say?"

"He says hmmmmm to most things."

Thomassy laughed, a sharp, short, clear laugh. He was taking another look at me, as if something was contradicting the first impression he had formed.

"He said most women feel guilty about being raped."

"Do you?"

"No, I feel wronged. I want that son of a bitch in jail!"

I felt the heat in my cheeks, my whole body's instant rage. Control yourself was the one piece of childhood admonition that stuck like a flypaper echo I couldn't shake off. I took a lungful of air, watching him watching me.

"Did you say that to Dr. Koch?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He said he doesn't put people in jail, I should see a lawyer."