Ira Levin - The Stepford Wives

"Herb is inside with Gary Claybrook, " Kit said, closing the front door. "Do you want to say hello to them?"

Joanna went to the living-room archway and looked in: Herb and Gary were sitting on a sofa watching a large color TV across the room. Gary was holding half a sandwich and chewing. A plate of sandwiches and two cans of beer stood on a cobbler's bench before them. The room was beige and brown and green; Colonial, immaculate. Joanna waited till a retreating ballplayer caught the ball, and said, "Hi."

Herb and Gary turned and smiled. "Hello, Joanna," they said, and Gary said, "How are you?" Herb said, "Is Walter here too?"

"Fine. No, he isn't," she said. "I just came over to talk with Kit. Good game?"

Herb looked away from her, and Gary said, "Very."

Kit, beside her and smelling of Walter's mother's perfume, whatever it was, said, "Come, let's go into the kitchen."

"Enjoy," she said to Herb and Gary. Gary, biting into his sandwich, eye-smiled through his glasses, and Herb looked at her and said, "Thanks, we will."

She followed Kit over the plastic-shield vinyl.

"Would you like a cup of coffee?" Kit asked.

"No, thanks." She followed Kit into the coffee-smelling kitchen. It was immaculate, of course-except for the open dryer, and the clothes and the laundry basket on the counter on top of it. The washer's round port was storming. The floor was more plastic shield.

"It's right on the stove," Kit said, "so it wouldn't be any trouble."

"Well in that case…"

She sat at a round green table while Kit got a cup and saucer from a neatly filled cabinet, the cups all hookhung, the plates filed in racks. "It's nice and quiet now," Kit said, closing the cabinet and going toward the stove. (Her figure, in a short sky-blue dress, was almost as terrific as Charmaine's.) "The kids are over at Gary and Donna's," she said. "I'm doing Marge McCormick's wash. She's got a bug of some kind and can barely move today."

"Oh that's a shame," Joanna said.

Kit fingertipped the top of a percolator and poured coffee from it. "I'm sure she'll be good as new in a day or two," she said. "How do you take this, Joanna?"

"Milk, no sugar, please."

Kit carried the cup and saucer toward the refrigerator. "If it's about that get-together again," she said, "I'm afraid I'm still awfully busy."

"It isn't that," Joanna said. She watched Kit open the refrigerator. "I wanted to find out what happened to the Women's Club," she said.

Kit stood at the lighted refrigerator, her back to Joanna. "The Women's Club?" she said. "Oh my, that was years ago. It disbanded."

"Why?" Joanna asked.

Kit closed the refrigerator and opened a drawer beside it. "Some of the women moved away," she said-she closed the drawer and turned, putting a spoon on the saucer-"and the rest of us just lost interest in it. At least I did." She came toward the table, watching the cup. "It wasn't ac- complishing anything useful," she said. "The meetings got boring after a while." She put the cup and saucer on the table and pushed them closer to Joanna.

"Is that enough milk?" she asked.

"Yes, that's fine," Joanna said. "Thanks. How come you didn't tell me about it when I was here the other time?"

Kit smiled, her dimples deepening. "You didn't ask me," she said. "If you had I would have told you. It's no secret. Would you like a piece of cake, or some cookies?"

"No, thanks," Joanna said.

"I'm going to fold these things," Kit said, going from the table.

Joanna watched her close the dryer and take something white from the pile of clothes on it. She shook it out-a T-shirt. Joanna said, "What's wrong with Bill McCormick? Can't he run a washer? I thought he was one of our aerospace brains."

"He's taking care of Marge," Kit said, folding the T-shirt. "These things came out nice and white, didn't they?" She put the folded T-shirt into the laundry basket, smiling.

Like an actress in a commercial.

That's what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That's what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing suburban housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.

"Kit," she said.

Kit looked at her.

"You must have been very young when you were president of the club,"

Joanna said. "Which means you're intelligent and have a certain amount of drive. Are you happy now? Tell me the truth. Do you feel you're living a full life?"

Kit looked at her, and nodded. "Yes, I'm happy," she said. "I feel I'm living a very full life. Herb's work is important, and he couldn't do it nearly as well if not for me. We're a unit, and between us we're raising a family, and doing optical research, and running a clean comfortable household, and doing community work."

"Through the Men's Association."

"Yes.

Joanna said, "Were the Women's Club meetings more boring than housework?"

Kit frowned. "No," she said, "but they weren't as useful as housework.

You're not drinking your coffee. Is anything wrong with it?"

"No," Joanna said, "I was waiting for it to cool." She picked up the cup.

"Oh," Kit said, and smiled, and turned to the clothes and folded something.

Joanna watched her. Should she ask who the other women had been? No, they would be like Kit; and what difference would it make? She drank from the cup. The coffee was strong and rich-flavored, the best she'd tasted in a long time.

"How are your children?" Kit asked.

"Fine," she said.

She started to ask the brand of the coffee, but stopped herself and drank more of it.

MAYBE THE HARDWARE store's panes would have wobbled the moon's reflection interestingly, but there was no way of telling, not with the panes where they were and the moon where it was. C'est la vie. She mooched around the Center for a while, getting the feel of the night-empty curve of street, the row of white shopfronts on one side, the rise to the hill on the other; the library, the Historical Society cottage. She wasted some film on streetlights and litter baskets-clich6 timebut it was only black-and-white, so what the hell. A cat trotted down the path from the library, a silver-gray cat with a black moon-shadow stuck to its paws; it crossed the street toward the market parking lot. No, thanks, we're not keen on cat pix.

She set up the tripod on the library lawn and took shots of the shopfronts, using the fifty-millimeter lens and making ten-, twelve-, and fourteen-second exposures. An odd medicinal smell soured the air-coming on the breeze at her back. It almost reminded her of something in her childhood, but fell short. A syrup she'd been given? A toy she had had?

She reloaded by moonlight, gathered the tripod, and backed across the street, scouting the library for a good angle. She found one and set up.

The white clapboard siding was black-banded in the overhead moonlight; the windows showed bookshelved walls lighted faintly from within. She focused with extra-special care, and starting at eight seconds, took each-a-second- longer exposures up to eighteen. One of them, at least, would catch the inside bookshelved walls without overexposing the siding.

She went to the car for her sweater, and looked around as she went back to the camera. The Historical Society cottage? No, it wa~i too tree-shadowed, and dull anyway. But the Men's Assoc.iation house, up on the hill, had a surprisingly comic look to it: a square old nineteenth-century house, solid and symmetrical, tipsily parasolled by a glistening TV antenna. The four tall upstairs windows were vividly alight, their sashes raised. Figures moved inside.

She took the fifty-millimeter lens out of the camera and was putting in the one-thirty-five when headlight be s swept onto the street and grew brighter. She turned and a spotlight blinded her. Closing her eyes, she tightened the lens; then shielded her eyes and squinted.