Ira Levin: The Stepford Wives

"Well next time wake me."

He came over onto his back. No tent.

"Did you?" she asked.

"No," he said.

"Oh," she said. "Well"-and smiled at him-"now I'm up." She lay down beside him, turning to him, and held her arm out over him; and he turned to her and they embraced and kissed. He tasted of Scotch. "I mean, consideration is fine," she said in his ear, "but Jesus."

It turned out to be one of their best times ever-for her, at least.

"Wow," she said, coming back from the bathroom, "I'm still weak."

He smiled at her, sitting in bed and smoking.

She got in with him and settled herself comfortably under his arm, drawing his hand down onto her breast. "What did they do," she said, "show you dirty movies or something?"

He smiled. "No such luck," he said. He put his cigarette by her lips, and she took a puff of it. "They took eightfifty from me in poker," he said, "and they chewed my ear off about the Zoning Board's evil intentions re Eastbridge Road."

"I was afraid you were getting bombed."

"Me? Two Scotches. They're not heavy drinkers. What did you do?"

She told him, and about her hopes for the picture of the black man. He told her about some of the men he had met: the pediatrician the Van Sants and the Claybrooks had recommended, the magazine illustrator who was Stepford's major celebrity, two other lawyers, a psychiatrist, the Police Chief, the manager of the Center Market.

"The psychiatrist should be in favor of letting women in," she said.

"He is," Walter said. "And so is Dr. Verry. I didn't sound out any of the others; I didn't want to come on as too much of an activist my first time there."

"When are you going again?" she asked-and was suddenly afraid (why?) that he would say tomorrow.

"I don't know," he said. "Listen, I'm not going to make it a way of life the way Ted and Vic do. I'll go in a week or so, I guess; I don't know.

It's kind of provincial really."

She smiled and snuggled closer to him.

SHE WAS ABOUT A THIRD OF the way down the stairs, going by foot-feel, holding the damn laundry basket to her face because of the damn banister, when wouldn't you know it, the double-damn phone rang.

She couldn't put the basket down, it would fall, and there wasn't enough room to turn around with it and go back up; so she kept going slowly down, foot-feeling and thinking Okay, okay to the phone's answer-me-this-instant ringing.

She made it to the bottom, put the basket down, and stalked to the den desk.

"Hello," she said-the way she felt, with no put-on graciousness.

'Hi, is this Joanna Eberhart?" The voice was loud, happy, raspy; Peggy Clavengerish. But Peggy Clavenger had been with Paris-Match the last she'd heard, and wouldn't even know she was married, let alone where she was living.

"Yes," she said. "Who's this?"

"We haven't been formally introduced," the no-notPeggy-Clavenger voice said, "but I'm going to do it right now. Bobbie, I'd like you to meet Joanna Eberhart. Joanna, I'd like you to meet Bobbie Markowe-that's K 0 W E. Bobbie has been living here in Ajax Country for five weeks now, and she'd like very much to know an 6 avid shutterbug with a keen interest in politics and the Women's Lib movement.' That's you, Joanna, according to what it says here in the Stepford Chronicle. Or Chronic III, depending on your journalistic standards. Have they conveyed an accurate impression of you? Are you really not deeply concerned about whether pink soap pads are better than blue ones or vice versa? Given complete freedom of choice, would you just as soon not squeeze the Charmin? Hello? Are you still there, Joanna? Hello?"

"Hello," Joanna said. "Yes, I'm here. And how I'm here! Hello! Son of a gun, it pays to advertise!"

"WHAT A PLEASURE TO SEE A messy kitchen!" Bobbie said. "It doesn't quite come up to mine-you don't have the little peanut-butter handprints on the cabinets-but it's good, it's very good. Congratulations."

"I can show you some dull dingy bathrooms if you'd like," Joanna said.

"Thanks. I'll just take the coffee."

"Is instant okay?"

"You mean there's something else?"

She was short and heavy-bottomed, in a blue Snoopy sweatshirt and jeans and sandals. Her mouth was big, with unusually white teeth, and she had blue take-in-everything eyes and short dark tufty hair. And small hands and dirty toes. And a husband named Dave who was a stock analyst, and three sons, ten, eight, and six. And an Old English sheepdog and a corgi. She looked a bit younger than Joanna, thirty-two or -three. She drank two cups of coffee and ate a Ring Ding and told Joanna about the women of Fox Hollow Lane.

"I'm beginning to think there's a-nationwide contest I haven't heard about," she said, tonguing her chocolated fingertips. "A million dollars and-Paul Newman for the cleanest house by next Christmas. 1 mean, it's scrub, scrub, scrub; wax, wax, wax-"

"It's the same around here," Joanna said. "Even at night! And the men all-"

"The Men's Association!" Bobbie cried.

They talked about it-the antiquated sexist unfairness of it, the real injustice, in a town with no women's organization, not even a League of Women Voters. "Believe me, I've combed this place," Bobbie said. "There's the Garden Club, and a few old-biddy church groups-for which I'm not eli- gible anyway; 'Markowe' is upward-mobile for 'Markowitz'-and there's the very non-sexist Historical Society.

Drop in and say hello to them. Corpses in lifelike positions."

Dave was in the Men's Association, and like Walter, thought it could be changed from within. But Bobbie knew better: "You'll see, we'll have to chain ourselves to the fence before we get any action. How about that fence? You'd think they were refining opium!"

They talked about the possibility of having a get-together with some of their neighbors, a rap session to wake them to the more active role they could play in the town's life; but they agreed that the women they had met seemed unlikely to welcome even so small a step toward liberation.

They talked about the National Organization for Women, to which they both belonged, and about Joanna's photography.

"My God, these are great!" Bobbie said, looking at the four mounted enlargements Joanna had hung in the den. "They're terrific!"

Joanna thanked her.

"'Avid shutterbug'! I thought that meant Polaroids of the kids! These are marvelous!"

"Now that Kim's in kindergarten I'm really going to get to work," Joanna said.

She walked Bobbie to her car.

"Damn it, no," Bobbie said. "We ought to try at least. Let's talk to these hausfraus; there must be some of them who resent the situation a little. What do you say? Wouldn't it be great if we could get a group together-maybe even a NOW chapter eventually-and give that Men's Associa- tion a good shaking-up? Dave and Walter are kidding themselves; it's not going to change unless it's forced to change; fat-cat organizations never do. What do you say, Joanna? Let's ask around."

Joanna nodded. "We should," she said. "They can't all be as content as they seem."

SHE SPOKE TO CAROL VAN Sant. "Gee, no, Joanna," Carol said. "That doesn't sound like the sort of thing that would interest me. Thanks for ay-isking me though." She was cleaning the plastic divider in Stacy and Allison's room, wiping a span of its accordion folds with firm downstrokes of a large yellow sponge.

"It would only be for a couple of hours," Joanna said. "In the evening, or if it's more convenient for everybody, sometime during school hours."

Carol, crouching to wipe the lower part of the span, said, "I'm sorry, but I just don't have much time for that sort of thing."

Joanna watched her for a moment. "Doesn't it bother you," she said, "that the central organization here in Stepford, the only organization that does anything significant as far as community projects are concerned, is off limits to women? Doesn't that seem a little archaic to you?"