Leaving Lucy Pear(36)

On the screened porch, where she was sent against her will to recuperate, Rose handed Bea a copy of The President’s Daughter, easily the trashiest book Bea had ever read. She skimmed at first, but Nan Britton told the story of her affair with President Harding in such lurid detail, even Bea could not resist it—she took a glass of lemonade from Rose and forgot about her altogether until Rose, sitting behind Bea’s copy of To the Lighthouse, interrupted a passage Bea was reading about what went on in a very small closet in the White House by saying, “I’m not happy, Bea-Bea.”

Bea looked up. From her perch on a large wicker chair, in nothing but her bathing suit and an unbuttoned man’s shirt, Rose looked very small. It was hard to imagine her working as a physician, but that was what she did most days: put on her starched white coat, high-heeled boots, and lipstick and went to work among her male colleagues. Bea assumed it was a bold, fulfilled life, a natural extension of the young Rose who’d worn trousers belted provocatively at her waist and joined the Socialist Club at Smith. Once she had taught Bea a Negro spiritual, another time a ballad about Seneca Falls.

“What do you mean?”

“My sexual encounters are so infrequent, and cold.”

Bea put down the Britton book.

“Here,” Rose said. She poured more lemonade and Bea drank it. Rose lit a cigarette and went on, “I used to think sexual freedom meant doing whatever you wanted, with whomever you wanted, whenever you wanted to, but now I wonder if I’d be better off married.”

“Uh-huh.” The lemonade was spiked, Bea realized. Between the rum and the crash and the heat of the day she was woozy. She would have liked to curl up in her own chair, read smut until her eyes closed, sleep all afternoon. The only person who had ever used the word “sexual” in front of her was one doctor at Fainwright. And your sexual intimacy, it was forced, yes?

“I think I thought my sexual self was a man. Not homosexual, I don’t mean that, I mean voracious, craving variety, impossible to pin down. I think I was wrong.”

Bea nodded. Yes. Yes, she nodded at Fainwright.

“I’ve been reading Freud,” Rose said. “You’re not so sucked into the temperance vortex that you haven’t heard of Freud, right?”

This was why Bea couldn’t complain about the lemonade, which was rapidly loosening her mind. “Yes, I’ve heard of Freud. I’ve read him, actually.” In fact Freud had been read to her, by a fellow patient whose name Bea couldn’t remember now, a poet who said that Freud was the future, that the Europeans knew it but Fainwright was stuck in the last century with its Swedish exercise machines and pummeling shower cages and ice wraps. Bea remembered little of the Freud passage now. She remembered mostly that the poet was a tall, handsome woman with dark, billowing eyebrows whom Bea found surprisingly beautiful, even alluring. And she remembered—the memory cut like a scythe through the dense field of all she had forgotten—one doctor saying to another, “Don’t you see how centrally Ms. Haven’s poor appetite functions in this case? Wouldn’t it make sense that a girl who wishes to repress her memory of her first sexual encounter, an encounter against her will, would attempt to rid herself of womanly flesh?” She remembered his pride, his sweaty face, how he had swaggered out of the conference room without looking at her. She was humiliated now, remembering this.

Rose swished lemonade in her mouth, puffed out her cheeks, swallowed loudly, exhaled. “I just think I actually want one man, one man who knows how to please me. I’m tired of pleasing myself. It’s so . . . boring. After a while.”

Bea could no longer look at Rose. She knew but did not know what Rose was talking about. She took up her book again, whiffled through the pages. She found herself imagining, where Rose’s feet were tucked up underneath her, men’s hands there, men’s mouths. She found herself thinking of the lieutenant fingering her dress off her shoulder, pulling up her skirt, pushing her against the wall.

“Bea-Bea.” Rose giggled. “You look terrified.”

“My mother,” Bea whispered.

“Your mother is outside talking with Brigitte, pretending that she is French and that Brigitte’s baby is yours. Your mother can’t hear us. And neither can mine. But Albert, for instance. I mean, doesn’t he . . . make you happy? Tell me he makes you happy. When you actually see each other, of course.” She scrunched her nose. “So maybe that isn’t the best example.”

Bea was stuck on Rose’s nonchalant mention of Vera. What was wrong with Bea that she should miss Rose’s mother more than Rose did? Bea used to think everyone must have a mother they loved better than their own, but now she wasn’t sure—who else took refuge in her aunt’s house ten years after the aunt had died? She said, “I’m probably a bad example in every way.”

“Still, he’s there. If you wanted him.”

“Yes.”

“He’s very handsome.”

“He’s very handsome.”

“If I were you . . .” Rose trailed off. “Of course, I have no idea. It couldn’t have been easy for you.” She was quiet. They heard the boys shouting as Helen and Emma ferried them toward the club. Brigitte laughed at something Lillian said. “I just think, and what I’m trying to say, what I didn’t say but what I want to say, is I’m going to do better with what I’ve got. No more looking back, no more regrets. Mark my word, and hold me to it, Bea-Bea, by next year I’m going to be married. I’m going to find a man and marry him and stop being so mean and lonely.” She pressed her lips together, then resettled herself on the chair, her thighs where they had pressed into the wicker hatched with stripes. “I have to admit,” she said, shaking To the Lighthouse, “I don’t understand this book at all. Do you?”