Ira Levin: The Stepford Wives

"'Ar-kay-ic'?" Carol said, squeezing her sponge in a bucket of sudsy water.

Joanna looked at her. "Out of date, old-fashioned," she said.

Carol squeezed the sponge out above the bucket. "No, it doesn't seem archaic to me," she said. She stood up straight and reached the sponge to the top of the next span of folds. "Ted's better equipped for that sort of thing than I am," she said, and began wiping the folds with firm downstrokes, each one neatly overlapping the one before. "And men need a place where they can relax and have a drink or two," she said.

"Don't women?"

"No, not as much." Carol shook her neat red-haired shampoo-commercial head, not turning from her wiping. "I'm sorry, Joanna," she said, "I just don't have time for a get-together."

"Okay," Joanna said. "If you change your mind, let me know."

"Would you mind if I don't walk you downstairs?"

"No, of course not."

She spoke to Barbara Chamalian, on the other side of the Van Sants.

"Thanks, but I don't see how I could manage it," Barbara said. She was a square-jawed brownhaired woman, in a snug pink dress molding an excep- tionally good figure. "Lloyd stays in town a lot," she said, "and the evenings he doesn't, he Ekes to go to the Men's Association. I'd hate to pay a sitter for just-"

"It could be during school hours," Joanna said.

"No," Barbara said, "I think you'd better count me out.'9 She smiled, widely and attractively. "I'm glad we've met though," she said. "Would you like to come in and sit for a while? I'm ironing."

"No, thanks," Joanna said. "I want to speak to some of the other women."

She spoke to Marge McCormick ("I honestly don't think I'd be interested in that") and Kit Sundersen ("I'm afraid I haven't the time; I'm really sorry, Mrs. Eberhart") and Donna Claybrook ("That's a nice idea, but I'm so busy these days. Thanks for asking me though").

She met Mary Ann Stavros in an aisle in the Center Market. "No, I don't think I'd have time for anything like that. There's so much to do around the house. You know."

"But you go out sometimes, don't you?" Joanna said.

"Of course I do," Mary Ann said. "I'm out now, aren't I?'

"I mean out. For relaxation."

Mary Ann smiled and shook her head, swaying her sheaves of straight blond hair. "No, not often," she said. "I don't feel much need for relaxation.

See you." And she went away, pushing her grocery cart; and stopped, took a can from a shelf, looked at it, and fitted it down into her cart and went on.

Joanna looked after her, and into the cart of another woman going slowly past her. My God, she thought, they even fill their carts neatly! She looked into her own: a jumble of boxes and cans and jars. A guilty impulse to put it in order prodded her; but I'm damned if I will! she thought, and grabbed a box from the shelf-Ivory Snow -and tossed it in. Didn't even need the damn stuff!

She spoke to the mother of one of Kim's classmates in Dr. Verry's waiting room; and to Yvonne Weisgalt, on the other side of the Stavroses; and to Jill Burke, in the next house over. All of them turned her down; they either had too little time or too little interest to meet with other women and talk about their shared experiences.

Bobbie had even worse luck, considering that she spoke to almost twice as many women. "One taker," she told Joanna. "One eighty-five-year-old widow who dragged me through her door and kept me prisoner for a solid hour of close-up saliva spray. Any time we're ready to storm the Men's Association, Eda Mae Hamilton is ready and willing."

"We'd better keep in touch with her," Joanna said.

"Oh no, we're not done yet!"

They spent a morning calling on women together, on the theory (Bobbie's) that the two of them, speaking in planned ambiguities, might create the encouraging suggestion of a phalanx of women with room for one more. It didn't work.

"Jee-zus!" Bobbie said, ramming her car viciously up Short Ridge Hill.

"Something fishy is going on here! We're in the Town That Time Forgot!"

ONE AFTERNOON JOANNA left Pete and Kim in the care of sixteen-year-old Melinda Stavros and took the train into the city, where she met Walter and their friends Shep and Sylvia Tackover at an Italian restaurant in the theater district. It was good to see Shep and Sylvia again; they were a bright, homely, energetic couple who had survived several bad blows, in- cluding the death by drowning of a four-year-old son. It was good to be in the city again too; Joanna relished the color and bustle of the busy restaurant.

She and Walter spoke enthusiastically about Stepford's beauty and quiet, and the advantages of living in a house rather than an apartment. She didn't say anything about how home-centered the Stepford women were, or about the absence of outside-the-home activities. It was vanity, she supposed; an unwillingness to make herself the object of commiseration, even Shep and Sylvia's. She told them about Bobbie and how amusing she was, and about Stepford's fine uncrowded schools. Walter didn't bring up the Men's Association and neither did she. Sylvia, who was with the city's Housing and Development Administration, would have had a fit.

But on the way to the theater Sylvia gave her a sharp appraising look and said, "A tough adjustment?"

"In ways," she said.

"You'll make it," Sylvia said, and smiled at her. "How's the photography?

It must be great for you up there, coming to everything with a fresh eye."

"I haven't done a damn thing," she said. "Bobbie and I have been running around trying to drum up some Women's Lib activity. It's a bit of a backwater, to tell the truth."

"Running and drumming isn't your work," Sylvia said. "Photography is, or ought to be."

"I know," she said. "I've got a plumber coming in any day now to put in the darkroom sink."

"Walter looks chipper."

"He is. It's a good life really."

The play, a musical hit of the previous season, was disappointing. In the train going home, after they had hashed it over for a few minutes, Walter put on his glasses and got out some paper work, and Joanna skimmed Time and then sat looking out the window and smoking, watching the darkness and the occasional lights riding through it.

Sylvia was right; photography was her work. To hell with the Stepford women. Except Bobbie, of course.

Both cars were at the station, so they had to ride home separately. Joanna went first in the station wagon and Walter followed her in the Toyota. The Center was empty and stage-setty under its three streetlights-yes, she would take pictures there, before the darkroom was finished-and there were headlights and lighted windows up at the Men's Association house, and a car waiting to pull out of its driveway.

Melinda Stavros was yawning but smiling, and Pete and Kim were in their beds sound asleep.

In the family room there were empty milk glasses and plates on the lamp table, and crumpled balls of white paper on the sofa and the floor before it, and an empty gingerale bottle on the floor among the balls of paper.

At least they don't pass it on to their daughters, Joanna thought.

THE THIRD TIME WALTER WENT to the Men's Association he called at about nine o'clock and told Joanna he was bringing home the New Projects Committee, to which he had been appointed the time before. Some construction work was being done at the house (she could hear the whine of machinery in the background) and they couldn't find a quiet place where they could sit and talk.

"Fine," she said. "I'm getting the rest of the junk out of the darkroom, so you can have the whole-"

"No, listen," he said, "stay upstairs with us and get into the conversation. A couple of them are die-hard men- only's; it won't do them any harm to hear a woman make intelligent comments.

I'm assuming you will."