The Women's Room Read Online Free Page A

fairyland images, she had no notion of reality. But obviously she did; fairyland was her reality. So if you want to stand in judgment on her you have to determine whether her reality was the same as other people’s, i.e., was she crazy? In her economy, the wicked queen was known by her face and body shape, and the good fairy by hers. The good fairy showed up whenever she was needed, never took a dime for all her wand-waving, and then conveniently disappeared. I leave it to you to decide on Mira’s sanity.

4
    I no longer try to label things. Here, where everything seems so arid and austere, the place teems with life: in the sea, in the sky, on the rocks. I come here to get away from a greater emptiness. Inland a couple of miles stands the third-rate community college where I teach courses like ‘Fairy Tale and Folklore’ (can’t get away from it!) and ‘Grammar 12,’ mostly to female students who aim to do well enough here to get into the state college and acquire teacher certification and the joys of the ten-month year. Wait, I think, just wait and see how much joy it holds.
    Look at those snail clusters on that rock. There are thousands of snails, and mussels too, among the heaped boulders, clustering together like inhabitants of an ancient city. They are gorgeous, they shimmer with colors they’ve had for thousands of years: red and gold and blue and white and orange. They all live together. I find that extraordinary. Each one occupies its own tiny space, no one seems to push around for more room. Do you suppose there are snails with too little room who just die? It is clear that their life must be mainly interior. I like to come here and stare at them. I never touch them. But as I look, I keep thinking that they don’t have to create their order, they don’t have to create their lives, those things are just programmed into them. All they have to do is live. Is that an illusion, do you suppose?
    I feel terribly alone. I have enough room, but it’s empty. Or maybe I don’t, maybe room means more than space. Clarissa once said that isolation was insanity. She never says anything carelessly, her words come out of her mouth like fruit that is perfectly ripened. Unripefruit she doesn’t deal in: that’s why she is silent so often. So I guess isolation is insanity. But what can I do? At the one or two parties a year I’m invited to, I have to listen to academic gossip, snarling retorts (never made in fact) to the president, nasty cracks about the mediocrity of the dean. In a place like Harvard, academic gossip is pretentious and hollow, full of name dropping and craven awe, or else it oozes complacency, the invulnerability of the elect. In a place like this, where everyone feels a loser, the gossip is mean-minded and full of that kind of hate and contempt that is really disgust at one’s own failure in life. There aren’t many single people here except for a few very young male instructors. There are damned few women, none single, except for one sixty-year-old widow who does needlepoint at faculty meetings. I mean, not everything is in your head, is it? Do I have to accept total responsibility for my fate? I don’t think it’s my fault that I’m lonely. People say – well, Iso wrote (she would!) – that I should drive down to Boston on weekends and go to the singles bars. You know, she could do it and she’d find someone interesting. But not me. I know it. I’d meet some middle-aged swinger with a deep tan and sideburns (not quite a beard) and a mod suit (pink jacket, maroon pants) and a belly kept in by three hours a week at the gym or the tennis club, and I’d die of his emptiness even more than I’m dying of my own.
    So I walk the beach. I’ve been coming out here all year, since last September, with a kerchief tied around my head, blue jeans splashed with the paint I used to try to make my apartment a bit more livable, an embroidered poncho Kyla brought me from Mexico, and in the winter months, a