Ira Levin: The Stepford Wives

They all did, except Claude, who wanted tea.

She went into the kitchen and put the drawing on the place mats on top of the refrigerator. An Ike Mazzard drawing of her! Who'da thunk it, back home when she was eleven or twelve, reading Mom's Journals and Companions? It was foolish of her to have gotten so uptight about it. Mazzard had been nice to do it.

Smiling, she ran water into the coffee-maker, plugged it in, and put in the basket and spooned in coffee. She put the top on, pressed the plastic lid down onto the coffee can, and turned around. Coba leaned in the doorway watching her, his arms folded, his shoulder to the jamb.

Very cool in his jade turtleneck (matching his eyes, of course) and slate-gray corduroy suit.

He smiled at her and said, "I like to watch women doing little domestic chores."

"You came to the right town," she said. She tossed the spoon into the sink and took the coffee can to the refrigerator and put it in.

Coba stayed there, watching her.

She wished Walter would come. "You don't seem particularly dizzy," she said, getting out a saucepan for Claude's tea. "Why do they call you Diz?"

"I used to work at Disneyland," he said.

She laughed, going to the sink. "No, really," she said.

"That's really."

She turned around and looked at him.

"Don't you believe me?" he asked.

"No," she said.

"Why not?"

She thought, and knew.

"Why not?" he said. "Tell me."

To hell with him; she would. "You don't look like someone who enjoys making people happy."

Torpedoing forever, no doubt, the admission of women to the hallowed and sacrosanct Men's Association.

Coba looked at her-disparagingly. "How little you know," he said.

And smiled and got off the jamb, and turned and walked away.

"I'M NOT SO KEEN ON El Presidente," she said, undressing, and Walter said, "Neither am 1. He's cold as ice. But he won't be in office forever."

"He'd better not be," she said, "or women'll never get in. When are elections?"

"Right after the first of the year."

"What does he do?"

"He's with Burnham-Massey, on Route Nine. So is Claude."

"Oh listen, what's his last name?"

"Claude's? Axhehn."

Kim began crying, and was burning hot; and they were up till after three, taking her temperature (a hundred and three at first), reading Dr. Spock, calling Dr. Verry, and giving her cool baths and alcohol rubs.

BOBBIE FOUND A LIVE ONE. "At least she is compared to the rest of these clunks," her voice rasped from the phone. "Her name is Charmaine Wimperis, and if you squint a little she turns into Raquel Welch. They're up on Burgess Ridge in a two-hundredthousand-dollar contemporary, and she's got a maid and a gardener and-now hear this-a tennis court."

"Really?"

"I thought that would get you out of the cellar. You're invited to play, and for lunch too. I'll pick you up around eleven-thirty."

"Today? I can't! Kim is still home."

"Still?"

"Could we make it Wednesday? Or Thursday, just to be safe."

"Wednesday," Bobbie said. "I'll check with her and call you back."

WHAM! POW! SLAM! Charmaine was good, too goddamn good; the ball came zinging straight and hard, first to one side of the court and then to the other; it kept her racing from side to side and then drove her all the way back-a just-inside-the-liner that she barely caught. She ran in after it, but Charmaine smashed it down into the left net corner-ungettable-and took the game and the set, six-three. After taking the first set six-two. "Oh God, I've had it!" Joanna said. "What a fiasco! Oh boy!"

"One more!" Charmaine called, backing to the serve line. "Come on, one more!"

"I can't! I'm not going to be able to walk tomorrow as it is!" She picked up the ball. "Come on, Bobbie, you play!"

Bobbie, sitting cross-legged on the grass outside the mesh fence, her face trayed on a sun reflector, said, "I haven't played since camp, for Chrisake."

"Just a game then!" Charmaine called. "One more game, Joanna!"

"All right, one more game!"

Charinaine won it.

"You killed me but it was great!" Joanna said as they walked off the court together. "Thank you!"

Charmaine, patting her high-boned cheeks carefully with an end of her towel, said, "You just have to get back in practice, that's all. You have a first-rate serve."

"Fat lot of good it did me."

"Will you play often? All I've got now are a couple of teen-age boys, both with permanent erections."

Bobbie said, "Send them to my place"-getting up from the ground.

They walked up the flagstone path toward the house.

"It's a terrific court," Joanna said, toweling her arm.

"Then use it," Charmaine said. "I used to play every day with Ginnie Fisher-do you know her?-but she flaked out on me. Don't you, will you?

How about tomorrow?"

"Oh I couldn't!"

They sat on a terrace under a Cinzano umbrella, and the maid, a slight gray-haired woman named Nettie, brought them a pitcher of Bloody Mary's and a bowl of cucumber dip and crackers. "She's marvelous," Charmaine said. "A German Virgo; if I told her to lick my shoes she'd do it. What are you, Joanna?"

"An American Taurus."

"If you tell her to lick your shoes she spits in your eye," Bobbie said.

"You don't really believe that stuff, do you?"

"I certainly do," Charmaine said, pouring Bloody Mary's. "You would too if you came to it with an opcn mind." (Joanna squinted at her: no, not Raquel Welch, but darn close.) "That's why Ginnie Fisher flaked out on me," she said. "She's a Gemini; they change all the time. Taureans are stable and dependable. Here's to tennis galore."

Joanna said, "This particular Taurean has a house and two kids and no German Virgo."

Charmaine had one child, a nine-year-old son named Merrill. Her husband Ed was a television producer. They had moved to Stepford in July. Yes, Ed was in the Men's Association, and no, Charmaine wasn't bothered by the sexist injustice. "Anything that gets him out of the house nights is fine with me," she said. "He's Aries and I'm Scorpio."

"Oh well," Bobbie said, and put a dip-loaded cracker into her mouth.

"It's a very bad combination," Charmaine said. "If I knew then what I know now."

"Bad in what way?" Joanna asked.

Which was a mistake. Charmaine told them at length about her and Ed's manifold incompatibilities-social, emotional, and above all, sexual. Nettie served them lobster Newburg and julienne potatoes-"Oi, my hips," Bobbie said, spooning lobster onto her plate-and Charmaine went on in candid detail. Ed was a sex fiend and a real weirdo. "He had this rubber suit made for me, at God knows what cost, in England. I ask you, rubber? 'Put it on one of your secretaries,' I said, 'you're not going to get me into it.'

Zippers and padlocks all over. You can't lock up a Scorpio. Virgos, any time; their thing is to serve. But a Scorpio's thing is to go his own way."

"If Ed knew then what you know now," Joanna said.

"It wouldn't have made the least bit of difference," Charmaine said. "He's crazy about me. Typical Aries."

Nettie brought raspberry tarts and coffee. Bobbie groaned. Charmaine told them about other weirdos she had known. She had been a model and had known several.

She walked them to Bobbie's car. "Now look," she said to Joanna, "I know you're busy, but any time you have a free hour, any time, just come on over. You don't even have to call; I'm almost always here."

"Thanks, I will," Joanna said. "And thanks for today. It was great."

"Any time," Charmaine said. She leaned to the window. "And look, both of you," she said, "would you do me a favor? Would you read Linda Goodman's Sun Signs? Just read it and see how right she is. They've got it in the Center Pharmacy, in paper. Will you? Please?"

They gave in, smiling, and promised they would.