a baby girding itself for the bottle or the breast.
“Where’s our storm?” said Lily as he joined her.
Keith sank back. Lily too was like a foster-sister to him … All will be decided here, he thought. All will be decided in the castle in Italy. Right from the start, as he scaled the tower with his bags, three steps below Scheherazade (the segment of white in all that churning bronze), he strongly intuited that his sexual nature was still open to change. For a while it worried him: he would go gay and be swept off his feet by Amen; he would fall for one of the prettier ewes in the field beyond the paddock; at the very least, he would develop a sick thing for, say, Oona, or Conchita—or even Dodo! … This is the climax of my youth, he thought. All will be decided here.
Then it came, an hour later, two hours, three hours. Amateurish, tinny, like a pantomime shotgun. You could almost see the bearded villain in his frock coat, and the flabby smoke ring widening over his blunderbuss. Amateurish—and neolithically loud.
“You?” Lily suddenly said.
“Yes,” he said. “Me.”
“Mm. Tomorrow all your dreams will come true.”
“How’s that?”
“After the storm. We display ourselves. Her. Down by the pool.”
FIRST INTERVAL
The Me Decade wasn’t called the Me Decade until 1976. In the summer of 1970 they were only six months into it; but they could all be pretty sure that the 1970s was going to be a me decade. This was because all decades were now me decades. There has never been anything that could possibly be called a you decade: technically speaking, you decades (back in the feudal night) would have been known as thou decades. The 1940s was probably the last we decade. And all decades, until 1970, were undeniably he decades. So the Me Decade was the Me Decade, right enough—a new intensity of self-absorption. But the Me Decade was also and unquestionably the She Decade.
It was all being arranged, history was arranging it—just for Keith. Or so he sometimes felt. It was all being done with Keith in mind.
Among the poor (according to a distinguished Marxist historian),
women went out to work after 1945 because, to put it crudely, children no longer did so
. Then higher education, with the female share of university places set to double from a quarter to a half. Also, and never for a moment forgetting Keith’s needs: antibiotics (1955), the Pill (1960), the Equal Pay Act (1963), the Civil Rights Act (1964), the National Organization for Women (1966), “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” (1968), the National Abortion Rights Action League (1969).
The Female Eunuch
(love and romance are illusions),
Women’s Estate
(the nuclear family is a consumerist hoax),
Sexual Politics
(bottomless insecurity drives the man’s will to dominate), and
Our Bodies, Ourselves
(how to emancipate the bedroom) all appeared in 1970, back to back, and with perfect timing. It was official. It was here, and just for Keith.
• • •
Not until the year 2003 did the year 1970 catch up with him.
The date was April 1, or April Fool’s Day, and he was fresh from the most extraordinary encounter with his first wife. Keith’s immediate response, when the encounter ended, was to call his second wife and tell her about it (his second wife thought it was outrageous). When he got home, he gave a more detailed version to his third wife, and his third wife, who was nearly always insanely cheerful, thought it was very funny.
“How can you laugh? It means my whole life is meaningless.”
“No it doesn’t. It just means your first marriage was meaningless.”
Keith looked down at the backs of his hands. “My second marriage isn’t looking too clever either. Suddenly. Talk about a rebound.”
“Mm. But you
can’t
say that. Think of the boys. Think of Nat and Gus.”
“That’s true.”
“What about your third marriage?”
“That’s looking all right. Thanks to you, my darling. But all that time I was just … Now I’m
“Where’s our storm?” said Lily as he joined her.
Keith sank back. Lily too was like a foster-sister to him … All will be decided here, he thought. All will be decided in the castle in Italy. Right from the start, as he scaled the tower with his bags, three steps below Scheherazade (the segment of white in all that churning bronze), he strongly intuited that his sexual nature was still open to change. For a while it worried him: he would go gay and be swept off his feet by Amen; he would fall for one of the prettier ewes in the field beyond the paddock; at the very least, he would develop a sick thing for, say, Oona, or Conchita—or even Dodo! … This is the climax of my youth, he thought. All will be decided here.
Then it came, an hour later, two hours, three hours. Amateurish, tinny, like a pantomime shotgun. You could almost see the bearded villain in his frock coat, and the flabby smoke ring widening over his blunderbuss. Amateurish—and neolithically loud.
“You?” Lily suddenly said.
“Yes,” he said. “Me.”
“Mm. Tomorrow all your dreams will come true.”
“How’s that?”
“After the storm. We display ourselves. Her. Down by the pool.”
FIRST INTERVAL
The Me Decade wasn’t called the Me Decade until 1976. In the summer of 1970 they were only six months into it; but they could all be pretty sure that the 1970s was going to be a me decade. This was because all decades were now me decades. There has never been anything that could possibly be called a you decade: technically speaking, you decades (back in the feudal night) would have been known as thou decades. The 1940s was probably the last we decade. And all decades, until 1970, were undeniably he decades. So the Me Decade was the Me Decade, right enough—a new intensity of self-absorption. But the Me Decade was also and unquestionably the She Decade.
It was all being arranged, history was arranging it—just for Keith. Or so he sometimes felt. It was all being done with Keith in mind.
Among the poor (according to a distinguished Marxist historian),
women went out to work after 1945 because, to put it crudely, children no longer did so
. Then higher education, with the female share of university places set to double from a quarter to a half. Also, and never for a moment forgetting Keith’s needs: antibiotics (1955), the Pill (1960), the Equal Pay Act (1963), the Civil Rights Act (1964), the National Organization for Women (1966), “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” (1968), the National Abortion Rights Action League (1969).
The Female Eunuch
(love and romance are illusions),
Women’s Estate
(the nuclear family is a consumerist hoax),
Sexual Politics
(bottomless insecurity drives the man’s will to dominate), and
Our Bodies, Ourselves
(how to emancipate the bedroom) all appeared in 1970, back to back, and with perfect timing. It was official. It was here, and just for Keith.
• • •
Not until the year 2003 did the year 1970 catch up with him.
The date was April 1, or April Fool’s Day, and he was fresh from the most extraordinary encounter with his first wife. Keith’s immediate response, when the encounter ended, was to call his second wife and tell her about it (his second wife thought it was outrageous). When he got home, he gave a more detailed version to his third wife, and his third wife, who was nearly always insanely cheerful, thought it was very funny.
“How can you laugh? It means my whole life is meaningless.”
“No it doesn’t. It just means your first marriage was meaningless.”
Keith looked down at the backs of his hands. “My second marriage isn’t looking too clever either. Suddenly. Talk about a rebound.”
“Mm. But you
can’t
say that. Think of the boys. Think of Nat and Gus.”
“That’s true.”
“What about your third marriage?”
“That’s looking all right. Thanks to you, my darling. But all that time I was just … Now I’m
Similar Books
