Ira Levin - The Stepford Wives

"Ciao!" she called, waving to them as they drove away.

"Well," Bobbie said, rounding the curve of the driveway, "she may not be ideal NOW material, but at least she's not in love with her vacuum cleaner."

"My God, she's beautiful," Joanna said.

"Isn't she? Even for these parts, where you've got to admit they look good even if they don't think good. Boy, what a marriage! How about that business with the suit? And I thought Dave had spooky ideas!"

"Dave?" Joanna said, looking at her.

Bobbie side-flashed a smile. "You're not going to get any true confessions out of me," she said. "I'm a Leo, and our thing is changing the subject.

You and Walter want to go to a movie Saturday night?"

THEY HAD BOUGHT THE HOUSE from a couple named Pilgrim, who had lived in it for only two months and had moved to Canada. The Pilgrims had bought it from a Mrs. McGrath, who had bought it from the builder eleven years before. So most of the junk in the storage room had been left by Mrs. McGrath. Actually it wasn't fair to call it junk: there were two good Colonial side chairs that Walter was going to strip and refinish some day; there was a complete twenty-volume Book of Knowledge, now on the shelves in Pete's room; and there were boxes and small bundles of hardware and oddments that, though not finds, at least seemed likely to be of eventual use. Mrs. McGrath had been a thoughtful saver.

Joanna had transferred most of the not-really-junk to a far corner of the cellar before the plumber had installed the sink, and now she was moving the last of it-cans of paint and bundles of asbestos roof shingles-while Walter hammered at a plywood counter and Pete handed him nails. Kim had gone with the Van Sant girls and Carol to the library.

Joanna unrolled a packet of yellowed newspaper and found inside it an inch-wide paintbrush, its clean bristles slightly stiff but still pliable.

She began rolling it back into the paper, a half page of the Chronicle, and the words WOMEN'S CLUB caught her eye. HEARS AUTHOR. She turned the paper to the side and looked at it.

"For God's sake," she said.

Pete looked at her, and Walter, hammering, said, "What is it?"

She got the brush out of the paper and put it down, and held the half page open with both hands, reading.

Walter stopped hammering and turned and looked at her. "What is it?" he asked.

She read for another moment, and looked at him; and looked at the paper, and at him. "There was-a women's club here," she said. "Betty Friedan spoke to them. And Kit Sundersen was the president. Dale Coba's wife and Frank Roddenberry's wife were officers."

"Are you kidding?" he said.

She looked at the paper, and read: "'Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique, addressed members of the Stepford Women's Club Tuesday evening in the Fairview Lane home of Mrs. Herbert Sundersen, the club's president. Over fifty women applauded Mrs. Friedan as she cited the inequities and frustrations besetting the modernday housewife…"' She looked at him.

"Can I do some?" Pete asked.

Walter handed the hammer to him. "When was that?" he asked her.

She looked at the paper. "It doesn't say, ifs the bottom half," she said.

"There's a picture of the officers. 'Mrs. Steven Margolies, Mrs. Dale Coba, author Betty Friedan, Mrs. Herbert Sundersen, Mrs. Frank Roddenberry, and Mrs. Duane T. Anderson."' She opened the half page toward him, and he came to her and took a side of it. "If this doesn't beat everything," he said, looking at the picture and the article.

"I spoke to Kit Sundersen," she said. "She didn't say a word about it. She didn't have time for a get-together. Like all the others."

"This must have been six or seven years ago," he said, fingering the edge of the yellowed paper.

"Or more," she said. "The Mystique came out while I was still working.

Andreas gave me his review copy, remember?"

He nodded, and turned to Pete, who was hammering vigorously at the counter top. "Hey, take it easy," he said, "you'll make half moons." He turned back to the paper. "Isn't this something?" he said. "It must have just petered out."

"With fifty members?" she said. "Over fifty? Applauding Friedan, not hissing her?"

"Well it's not here now, is it?" he said, letting the paper go. "Unless they've got the world's worst publicity chairman. I'll ask Herb what happened next time I see him." He went back to Pete. "Say, that's good work," he said.

She looked at the paper and shook her head. "I can't believe it," she said. "Who were the women? They can't all have moved away."

"Come on now," Walter said, "you haven't spoken to every woman in town."

"Bobbie has, darn near," she said. She folded the paper, and folded it, and put it on the carton of her equipment. The paintbrush was there; she picked it up. "Need a paintbrush?" she said.

Walter turned and looked at her. "You don't expect me to paint these things, do you?" he asked.

"No, no," she said. "It was wrapped in the paper."

"Oh," he said, and turned to the counter.

She put the brush down, and crouched and gathered a few loose shingles.

"How could she not have mentioned it?" she said. "She was the president."

AS SOON AS BOBBIE AND DAVE got into the car, she told them.

"Are you sure it's not one of those newspapers they print in penny arcades?" Bobbie said. "'Fred Smith Lays Elizabeth Taylor'?"

"It's the Chronic Ill," Joanna said. "The bottom half of the front page.

Here, if you can see."

She handed it back to them, and they unfolded it between them. Walter turned on the top light.

Dave said, "You could have made a lot of money by betting me and then showing me."

"Didn't think," she said.

"'Over fifty women'!" Bobbie said. "Who the hell were they? What happened?"

"That's what I want to know," she said. "And why Kit Sundersen didn't mention it to me. I'm going to speak to her tomorrow."

They drove into Eastbridge and stood on line for the nine o'clock showing of an R-rated English movie. The couples in the line were cheerful and talkative, laughing in clusters of four and six, looking to the end of the line, waving at other couples. None of them looked familiar except an elderly couple Bobbie recognized from the Historieal Society; and the seventeen-year-old McCormick boy and a date, holding hands solemnly, trying to look eighteen.

The movie, they agreed, was "bloody good," and after it they drove back to Bobbie and Dave's house, which was chaotic, the boys still up and the sheepdog galumphing all over. When Bobbie and Dave had got rid of the sitter and the boys and the sheepdog, they had coffee and cheesecake in the tornado- struck living room.

"I knew I wasn't uniquely irresistible," Joanna said, looking at an Ike Mazzard drawing of Bobbie tucked in the frame of the over-the-mantel picture.

"Every girl's an Ike Mazzard girl, didn't you know?" Bobbie said, tucking the drawing more securely into the frame's corner, making the picture more crooked than it already was. "Boy, I wish I looked half this good."

"You're fine the way you are," Dave said, standing behind them.

"Isn't he a doll?" Bobbie said to Joanna. She turned and kissed Dave's cheek. "It's still your Sunday to get up early," she said.

"JOANNA EBERHART," KIT Sundersen said, and smiled. "How are you? Would you like to come in?"

"Yes, I would," Joanna said, "if you have a few minutes."

"Of course I do, come on in," Kit said. She was a pretty woman, black-haired and dimple-cheeked, and only slightly older-looking than in the Chronicle's unflattering photo. About thirty-three, Joanna guessed, going into the entrance hall. Its ivory vinyl floor looked as if one of those plastic shields in the commercials had just floated down onto it.

Sounds of a baseball game came from the living room.