Ira Levin: The Stepford Wives

They went out onto the patio.

"I was going to tell you," he said as they walked. "I've changed my mind; I'm joining that Men's Association."

She stopped and looked at him.

"Too many important things are centered there to just opt out of it," he said. "Local politicking, the charity drives and so on…"

She said, "How can you join an outdated, oldfashioned-2'

"I spoke to some of the men on the train," he said. "Ted, and Vic Stavros, and a few others they introduced me to. They agree that the no-women-allowed business is archaic."

He took her arm and they walked on. "But the only way to change it is from inside," he said. "So I'm going to help do it. I'm joining Saturday night.

Ted's going to brief me on who's on what committees." He offered her his cigarettes. "Are you smoking or non- tonight?"

"Oh-smoking," she said, reaching for one.

They stood at the patio's far edge, in cool blue dusk twanging with crickets, and Walter held his lighter flame to Joanna's cigarette and to his own.

"Look at that sky," he said. "Worth every penny it cost US. 11 She looked-the sky was mauve and blue and dark blue; lovely-and then she looked at her cigarette. "Organizations can be changed from the outside," she said. "You get up petitions, you picket-"

"But it's easier from the inside," Walter said. "You'll see: if these men I spoke to are typical, it'll be the Everybody's Association before you know it. Coed poker. Sex on the pool table."

"If these men you spoke to were typical," she said, "it would be the Everybody's Association already. Oh, all right, go ahead and join; I'll think up slogans for placards. I'll have plenty of time when school starts."

He put his arm around her shoulders and said, "Hold off a little while. If it's not open to women in six months, I'll quit and we'll march together.

Shoulder to shoulder. 'Sex, yes; sexism, no."'

"'Stepford is out of step,"' she said, reaching for the ashtray on the picnic table.

"Not bad."

"Wait till I really get going."

They finished their cigarettes and stood arm in arm, looking at their dark wide runway of lawn, and the tall trees, black against mauve sky, that ended it. Lights shone among the trunks of the trees: windows of houses on the next street over, Harvest Lane.

"Robert Ardrey is right," Joanna said. "I feel very territorial."

Walter looked around at the Van Sant house and then squinted at his watch.

"I'm going to go in and wash up," he said, and kissed her cheek.

She turned and took his chin and kissed his lips. "I'm going to stay out a few minutes," she said. "Yell if they're acting up."

"Okay," he said. He went into the house by the living. room door.

She held her arms and rubbed them; the evening was growing cooler. Closing her eyes, she threw her head back and breathed the smell of grass and trees and clean air: delicious. She opened her eyes, to a single speck of star in dark blue sky, a trillion miles above her. "Star light, star bright," she said. She didn't say the rest of it, but she thought it.

She wished-that they would be happy in Stepford. That Pete and Kim would do well in school, and that she and Walter would find good friends and fulfillment. That he wouldn't mind the commuting-though the whole idea of moving had been his in the first place. That the lives of all four of them would be enriched, rather than diminished, as she had feared, by leaving the city-the filthy, crowded, crime-ridden, but so-alive city.

Sound and movement turned her toward the Van Sant house.

Carol Van Sant, a dark silhouette against the radiance of her kitchen doorway, was pressing the lid down onto a garbage can. She bent to the ground, red hair glinting, and came up with something large and round, a stone; she put it on top of the lid.

"Hi!" Joanna called.

Carol straightened and stood facing her, tall and leggy and naked-seeming-but edged by the purple of a lightedfrom-behind dress.

"Who's there?" she called.

"Joanna Eberhart," Joanna said. "Did I scare you? I'm sorry if I did."

She went toward the fence that divided her and Walter's property from the Van Sants'.

"Hi, Joanna," Carol said in her nasal New Englandy voice. "No, you didn't scay-er me. It's a nice night, isn't it?"

"Yes," Joanna said. "And I'm done with my unpacking, which makes it even nicer." She had to speak loud; Carol had stayed by her doorway, still too far away for comfortable conversation even though she herself was now at the flower bed edging the split-rail fence. "Kim had a great time with Allison this afternoon," she said. "They get along beautifully together."

"Kim's a sweet little girl," Carol said. "I'm glad Allison has such a nice new friend next door. Good night, Joanna." She turned to go in.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Joanna called.

Carol turned back. "Yes?" she said.

Joanna wished that the flower bed and fence weren't there, so she could move closer. Or, darn it, that Carol would come to her side of the fence.

What was so top-priority-urgent in that fluorescent-lighted copper-pothanging kitchen? "Walter's coming over to talk with Ted," she said, speaking loud to Carol's naked-seeming silhouette. "When you've got the kids down, why don't you come over and have a cup of coffee with me?"

"Thanks, I'd like to," Carol said, "but I have to wax the family-room floor."

"Tonight?"

"Night is the only time to do it, until school starts."

"Well can't it wait? It's only three more days."

Carol shook her head. "No, I've put it off too long as it is," she said.

"It's all over scuff-marks. And besides, Ted will be going to the Men's Association later on."

"Does he go every night?"

"Just about."

Dear God! "And you stay home and do housework?"

"There's always something or other that has to be done," Carol said. "You know how it is. I have to finish the kitchen now. Good night."

"Good night," Joanna said, and watched Carol go-profile of too-big bosom-into her kitchen and close the door. She reappeared almost instantly at the over-the-sink window, adjusting the water lever, taking hold of something and scrubbing it. Her red hair was neat and gleaming; her thin-nosed face looked thoughtful (and, damn it all, intelligent); her big purpled breasts bobbed with her scrubbing.

Joanna went back to the patio. No, she didn't know how it was, thank God.

Not to be like that, a compulsive hausfrau. Who could blame Ted for taking advantage of such an asking-to-be-exploited patsy?

She could blame him, that's who.

Walter came out of the house in a light jacket. "I don't think I'll be i-nore than an hour or so," he said.

"That Carol Van Sant is not to be believed," she said. "She can't come over for a cup of coffee because she has to wax the farnily-room floor.

Ted goes to the Men's Association every night and she stays home doing housework."

"Jesus," Walter said, shaking his head.

"Next to her," she said, "my mother is Kate Millett."

He laughed. "See you later," he said, and kissed her cheek and went away across the patio.

She took another look at her star, brighter now-Get to work, you, she thought to it-and went into the house.

THE FOUR OF THEM WENT OUT together Saturday morning, seatbelted into their spotless new station wagon; Joanna and Walter in sunglasses, talking of stores and shopping, and Pete and Kim powerswitching their windows down and up and down and up till Walter told them to stop it. The day was vivid and gemedged, a signal of autumn. They drove to Stepford Center (white frame Colonial shopfronts, postcard pretty) for discount-slip hardware and pharmaceuticals; then south on Route Nine to a large new shopping mall- discount-slip shoes for Pete and Kim (what a wait!) and a no-discount jungle gym; then east on Eastbridge Road to a McDonald's (Big Macs, chocolate shakes); and a little farther east for antiques (an octagonal end table, no documents); and then north-south-east-west over Stepford- Anvil Road, Cold Creek Road, Hunnicutt, Beavertail, Burgess Ridge- to show Pete and Kim (Joanna and Walter had seen it all house-hunting) their new school and the schools they would go to later on, the you'd-never-guess- what-it-is-from-the-outside non-polluting incinerator plant, and the picnic grounds where a community pool was under construction. Joanna sang "Good Morning Starshine" at Pete's request, and they all did "MacNamara's Band" with each one imitating a different instrument in the final part, and Kim threw up, but with enough warning for Walter to pull over and stop and get her unbuckled and out of the station wagon in time, thank God.