Stepping (10 page)

“You look like Mary Tyler Moore,” Caroline said to me the night we got dressed up to go to a fancy restaurant for a last-night dinner. I didn’t look at all like Mary Tyler Moore, but I kissed Caroline on the cheek; I understood that she was trying to pay me a compliment, trying to make me happy.

The day we took the girls to the airport, everyone ended up crying. Cathy started it, and this time I could tell it didn’t come from her metal faucets. This time she wasn’t trying to manipulate anyone. This time it was for real.

“I don’t want to leave you, Daddy!” she suddenly wailed as we stood in line at the gate, waiting for them to board the plane. “Please, Daddy,” she cried, “come back and live with Mommy and Caroline and me. I want to be a family again.” She clung to his neck and soaked his shirt collar.

“I’ll come see you soon, I’ll call you tonight, I’ll write you letters, sweetie,” Charlie said, and his voice was choked and his eyes were red and he couldn’t keep the tears from coming, even in such a public place.

Caroline stood clutching her new doll and her flight bag full of candy and comic books, clutching them as if someone might suddenly snatch them away if she let down her guard. She watched Cathy and Charlie with an envious haughtiness. She wanted to cry and fling herself and clutch at her father, too, but she was too big. She was older, the one in charge. Two tears escaped before she brusquely wiped them away on the back of her white gloves.

And I just let the tears go, flow, run. I felt sorry for all of them. For a moment I wanted to cry, “Oh, do go back to Adelaide and the girls; this is too awful to bear!”

But the flight was called and a stewardess came to take the girls on and told them she’d give them stewardess wings and playing cards and pencils and papers for drawing.

I said, “Goodbye, girls,” and quickly kissed them again, and Charlie walked on to the plane with them to be sure they were safely settled. He fastened their seat belts. A friend of Charlie’s would meet them in Chicago to help them change planes, just as he had done six weeks earlier on their flight down. Charlie came back and the flight attendant fastened a rope barring the way, and we stood together watching out the window as the plane slowly pulled away.

The rest of the day was like a canyon without a bridge. There was too big, too deep, too wide a hole in our lives for us to cross. We were silent on the way home, and dinner tasted bland, and we watched television in a stupor. We didn’t make love to each other that night. It would have seemed somehow profane. Charlie called Hadley, and Caroline answered and said they had gotten home just fine and that their mother had
painted their rooms and made new curtains and that Cathy couldn’t come to the phone, she was crying.

We went to bed early. Charlie turned to face one way and I turned the other. I lay awake deep into the night, wondering if this breach meant the end of our lives together. I was more miserable than I had ever been before in my life. But finally sleep came, and somehow the next day Charlie and I both woke up on the same side of that vast, lonely canyon. We went into each other’s arms. Later we ate breakfast and things happened, friends called, days passed, and our lives got back to normal again.

A few days after the girls left, Charlie came home with a present for me, a new, handsome, expensive hardback book of essays by the famous intellectual woman. I thanked Charlie and tried to read the book, but couldn’t somehow get interested. I couldn’t remember why I had cared so much about seeing her in the first place. I put the book on the shelf and turned away from it. It did not interest me. I wanted only to be with Charlie, to be happy in his arms.

*
Reader please note: the children were asked by their father if
he
could perform the tasks, but they invariably requested
my
services, and
my
services only.

Three

One brisk fall day in 1965, I was in a wonderful mood. It was October, and the girls had been gone for over a month, but I was still riding on the freedom I felt in those first few years whenever Charlie’s daughters left and my house, my life, my time, and my husband became entirely my own again. I had started my MA work that semester and been hired as a teaching assistant for two freshman composition and literature courses. I discovered that I loved teaching. It was not just that I now had my own money to buy gifts for Charlie, although that was certainly grand. It was more than that, more profound, it was as if a thick sturdy chunk of life had locked into place for me, as if a puzzle piece had filled a gap: now I knew who I was and what I wanted to do. I wanted to teach English to freshmen. And people were paying me to do it, and other people, younger people, were sitting in classrooms listening to me talk and acting as if they were learning things. It was marvelous. Life seemed to be all of a piece.

I walked from the university to my home that day fairly skipping with a normal everyday glee. The trees seemed to shimmer past me like great gleaming flames. Children laughed from swing sets. The scent of applewood in fireplaces filled the air. That night Charlie and I were going to a jazz concert with friends. Everything was right. Earlier that day I had mailed Caroline and Cathy two enormous funny gay Halloween cards. In my happiness I was generous; I wanted Charlie’s girls to be happy, too.

When I got home, Charlie waited until I had taken off my sweater and made myself some tea. We sat down in front of the fire together. Then he handed me some pieces of paper.

“Today’s mail,” he said. His voice was grim.

The first sheet was a Xeroxed copy of a letter from Adelaide Campbell to her lawyer, Jonathan Pease.

Dear Jonathan,

I am taking the time and trouble to set this all down in writing, although I still don’t understand why you want me to do it this way. I don’t think you are being a very good lawyer for me.

As I said on the phone the other evening, I want you to sue my ex-husband, Charles Campbell (the bastard), for a raise in child support. I want it doubled.

As you know, I am not receiving
any
alimony, in spite of the fact that I cooked and cleaned and washed and ironed for Charles Everett Campbell for almost ten years. But I’m not complaining about that. I have a job as a secretary now, and although this means I can’t be home when my little daughters need me, after school, or baking cookies, I am making enough money to take care of my own needs. I do not want any money for myself.

But I do want more money for my children. I don’t think it’s fair that they should be deprived when their father and his new wife have two homes, one in the city and one in the country. They also have two horses. Two cars. And my daughters reported that my husband’s new wife has at least thirty expensive dresses and a complete set of leather luggage and diamond jewelry. Why should she have so much and my little girls have so little?

It is true that Mr. Campbell sent the girls home this summer with new clothes. I suggest that if he had so much money to spend buying them new clothes, that money should be given to me.
I
am their mother, the girls live with me, and I have to wash the clothes and be sure that they’re warm and good enough. It is not fair for Mr. Campbell to impress the girls with new clothes and toys. Perhaps he
thinks he will buy their love that way, but I assure you he will not.

You said when I called the other night that it might be better if we settled out of court. I don’t want to do that. I want to take him to court and I want the child support doubled, and I want him to pay the court fees, and since I will have to fly back to Kansas I want him to pay the plane fare and my expenses. I want to go to court. I want the child support
doubled
. I have a reliable friend, Mrs. Anthony Leyden, and she will verify in writing that Mr. Campbell’s new wife has very expensive clothes. Why should she have expensive clothes when we’re living in a rented house? I tell you, I’m mad enough to spit nails, and if you won’t take this to court for me, I’ll get a lawyer who will.

Please phone or write me immediately regarding this matter.

              Sincerely,

Adelaide Campbell

The next sheet of paper was a letter from Albert Dennison, Charlie’s lawyer. It was a formal legal letter, telling Charlie when he was expected to appear in court. At the bottom of the letter Albert had scribbled in pen, “Sorry, Jonathan and I both tried to get her to settle out of court, but she won’t. She’s
mad
. Call me if you want.”

“Charlie!” I wailed when I finished the letter. “This is terrible! It’s unfair! Those are
my
clothes that my parents bought me last year. They’re
old
clothes! And it’s
my
car that my parents gave me for graduation from high school! I haven’t bought anything new except underpants and shoes since I married you. And one of the horses is mine. And the luggage is mine. And the diamond jewelry is mostly crappy rhinestone.”

“I’ll tell them that in court,” Charlie said. Then, less grimly, “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, Zelda. When we were divorced Adelaide got total possession of our house, which she sold at a good profit, and our best car, the new station wagon, and
all the appliances, and all but a few pieces of furniture that had been in my family. And she got all our savings, dammit, except for five measly thousand dollars. She got the few stocks I had. I’m paying for a college trust fund for Caroline and Cathy and all their medical and dental bills, and a great chunk of my salary goes to them each month for child support. I really don’t see that they can squeeze any more out of me. I’m surprised at Adelaide; she had seemed quite happy with the financial arrangements. And no one can penalize me for what you’ve brought to our marriage. Jesus, I inherited the farm and have to pay taxes on it. We’re barely making it now. If they win more money, I’ll have to sell the farm.”

At this somber thought we both stopped talking and stared at our hands. I fought back tears; I knew Charlie didn’t need any extra melodramatic misery at that moment in his life. But—
sell the farm
. He might as well have said, “We’ll just cut off part of our lives, cut off our legs as well, and one eye and a chunk of heart.” It was only one hundred scraggly Ozark acres with a ramshackle house. It wouldn’t bring much money at all if we sold it. But it meant everything to us, it was our own secret world within the world. To think of selling it, that little piece of land which had been Charlie’s parents’ and was now
ours
, made me want to lie on the floor and cry like a child and kick my feet and pound my fists. It made me sad, and it made me mad.

It made me mad to think that this woman I had never met had the right to break into my life and to threaten to take away the things I loved. I felt helpless. And I knew that Charlie, in spite of his calm, felt helpless, too.

He went to court on January 17, a cold Kansas Monday. He drove back to Wichita while I spent the day silently screaming in Kansas City. I went to class, but I couldn’t think, I didn’t care. I felt I had nothing to say to my students; I assigned them a pop in-class essay so they would have to write for fifty minutes and I wouldn’t have to struggle with words. I tried to work in the library, since final exams were just a week away. But nothing seemed important, nothing relevant. I felt as a farmer must feel when he stands outside in the perfect calm, looking up at a boiling green sky with the black twisting shape of a tornado coming closer, wondering how much destruction that tornado would wreak in his life, wondering how much of his life and home it will shatter and smash and hurl away. The hours passed so slowly I couldn’t breathe through them. I felt I was
strangling. Finally I started grading the in-class essays with a ruthless harshness I’d never felt before. I refused to let myself leave the library before all the essays were graded. That used up a good three hours. I expected Charlie back about seven. When I left the library it was six o’clock. I thought I had only one more hour to wait. I could not take deep breaths; my lungs had gone quite tight.

I walked out of the library and down the sidewalk, essays and books and notebooks piled in my arms, staring at nothing. A car pulled up next to me.

“Want a ride home?” It was Anthony Leyden, opening the passenger door of his car, leaning toward me, smiling his charming smile.

We hadn’t seen the Leydens since the summer. Charlie had seen Anthony at work, of course, had gone out for beers with him and other professors now and then, but the four of us had stopped getting together. Once or twice June had called to invite us over, or Anthony had told Charlie we should come over for a drink, or pumpkin pie, or Christmas cheer, or whatever. But I had always pleasantly, politely, refused. I could see no reason to spend any time with a woman who so obviously disliked me, who had, as the lawyer’s later letters had shown, played a major part in Adelaide’s discontent. I hadn’t felt bitter; I had just not wanted to go. After the letter in October from the lawyer, with the copy of Adelaide’s letter, I had felt like biting and pulling hair. “I have a reliable friend, Mrs. Anthony Leyden, and she will verify in writing that Mr. Campbell’s new wife has very expensive clothes.” What other ridiculous tidbits had June Leyden been feeding Adelaide Campbell’s anger? During the days before the hearing Charlie talked to his lawyers and with Adelaide, and it seemed that June had fed Adelaide’s anger quite a lot.

At first I had longed to call June on the phone or to confront her: “See my dress? Sure, it’s expensive, my parents bought it for me last year. Do you like my shoes? I bought them myself; I’m teaching now, I have my own money. I’m not a drab, dull drone like you, stuck at home in a greasy print housedress that’s five years outdated. Is that why you hate me so? Is that why you’re trying to take things from me?”