Chapter 8
"Goddamn it all!"
Denise Aronson ripped the half-typed sheet from her IBM, crumpled it viciously and tossed it into the overflowing waste-basket. Then, after lighting a Camel Filter, she rose from the kitchen table and began pacing around the house feeling like a caged tiger.
"What's wrong with me, anyway?" she muttered. "Why can't I get this outline written? And why are my nerves on edge?"
It would be easy to blame her black mood on the sultry temperatures, but Denise, who always tried to be vigorously honest with herself, knew the weather was only part of the problem. Several problems had been preying on her for the past couple of weeks, the most tangible of which was the letter from Free and Female's editor. Sighing, she trudged from the living room back to the kitchen and plucked the much-read sheet from among an untidy sprawl of papers, pamphlets, and editing pens.
"Your article on discriminatory hiring and firing policies was, as usual, well-written and informative, but for your next contribution we'd like you to come up with something along slightly different lines. What really boosts our readership is the personal touch, the experience to which they can relate their own problems. Facts, figures, and dogma don't interest the average Sister, according to our extensive market research: what the Reader wants to pay $2.50 for is a magazine which is interesting and exciting as well as informative. Remember, we are weaning our Readers away from True Confessions, Family Circle, and Readers' Digest! Note that subscription sales soared an encouraging 17 per cent upon the addition of our three new features: 'Cuisine for the Working Wife'; Florinda Black's 'Sexual Satisfaction' question-answer column; and 'My Story-Your Story-Our Story'.
"Accordingly, we would like you to come up with an outline for the 'My Story-Your Story-Our Story' series. Something fairly simple, readable, and filled with honest, intimate details. I understand that you have two growing daughters-something along this line would surely be relevant to many Sisters. May I suggest that you include a selection of appropriate photographs, if possible, as we have concluded from the abovementioned market research studies that a more visual approach is desirable.
"Please realize that we do not desire confession stories, merely extremely honest accounts of how you, personally, have solved problems which arose in the course of rearing your daughters to be proud, self-achieving Sisters. We will need your outline by Friday, July 13, at latest, in order to make whatever revisions seem necessary.
"In the meantime, may we remind you of the annual get-together for Free and Female supporters, friends, and contributors, to be held this year in..."
Denise balled up the letter and tossed it into the trash basket along with the discarded shards of her attempted outline. Today was Saturday, July 14, 1975.
An unwelcome truth surfaced from the depths of her soul: this is exactly why you've never made it as a writer-you don't dare put anything of yourself into your work. And then a second, even more damning accusation: how can you write about solving problems with your adolescent children when you haven't solved anything, when things are getting worse and worse with every passing day?
All of which brought her round to the most pressing worry of all-sixteen year-old Tracey's peculiar behavior during these past several weeks.
The phone shrilled, jolting the distracted divorcee from her disturbing reverie. She hastened to the living room to answer it, her sensitive nerve endings grating with every loud ring. "Hello. Aronson residence."
"I wanna talk to Tracey," drawled an Eastern-accented voice. The boy sounded as though he were either drunk, drugged, or dim-witted. "Is this Tracey?" The mother winced, stiffened. "You're speaking with Mrs. Aronson, Tracey's mother. She's not here at the moment." But where in God's name was she? It was three in the afternoon, and she only worked mornings on Saturday. Despite the heat, Denise realized that she was shivering. "Can I take a message?"
"Naaahhhhh ... I'll call another time."
The phone went dead. Denise very precisely replaced the receiver. Then she slowly mounted the staircase to the second floor bedrooms, realizing that she was about to do something she considered despicable and unethical: she was going to read Tracey's journal. Thanks to her once a month or so perfunctory spurts of clean-up, she knew exactly where her daughter hid her private diary, and although at first she'd carefully replaced it underneath the teenager's absurd collection of frilly lingerie now it seemed imperative to find out what was going on.
Who were these strange, almost inevitably impolite boys who were constantly telephoning her daughter? Summer people, she suspected, and older boys from the country club crowd which she didn't really approve of-but whoever they were, her child was going out every night, usually with a different date, and had dropped her former dull but unmenacing companions completely. Tracey even looked different: there was in inexplicably odd sparkle in her brown eyes, and dark rings beneath them, and she'd been wasting her entire salary on make-up and new clothes which emphasized her flowering figure. Also, she'd grown secretive. Something was definitely rotten here, and the worried mother realized she'd neither write the article which would pay the rent nor conquer the insomnia which had plagued her lately until she learned the truth. "July 4." She opened at random to an entry sloppily scribbled in the silly peacock-blue ink her inscrutable offspring fancied. "Wow, am I ever stoned after that wild orgy on the Chittenden's cruiser. We all got really smashed on something called Harvey Wallbangers-it tasted like orange juice, but there sure must've been something else, too! Then Jay (I think that was his name, but maybe it was Ray) had this fab '69' scene! Jay's cool-he goes to college back east and drives a Triumph Spitfire, and he'd pretty cute. But not as cute as Colin Highsmith!
"Colin was at the party, but he hardly even looked at me. I wonder why? He had a pretty date, but she was real uptight. Just when things started getting hot, she made him take her home. Why's he with a chick like that? Doesn't he remember how much fun we had the other night?"
"Oh, God..." gasped the shocked mother.
She held the diary at arm's length as if it were contaminated while taking deep breaths of oxygen to calm herself. All her worst fears were more than realized! Her finger shook as she turned the page.
"July 5. I forgot to write something that happened yesterday. Robbie came over in the afternoon-I'd forgotten I'd told him I'd go to the dumb old town dance if he came home for the weekend. Well, of course I couldn't go with him 'cause I was going to the Chittenden's cruiser bash. He got mad, so I told him to take his cheap ugly ring back and get lost."
"When I told Clara Pringle she thought I was nuts. I said I was on to bigger and better game, and she said that was awful. So what? I don't care if she'd mad at me 'cause I have lots of neat new friends and she's a drag anyhow."
"My own daughter-a selfish social climber!" Denise was pale as a ghost, and shivering despite the heat. "Oh, no!" She flipped to the latest entry.
"July 13. Thank God tomorrow's Saturday so I can sleep late-the yacht club dance really wore me out. . . especially what happened on the way home! I went with a guy called Scott something who was Colin's roommate at prep school, and Colin was with that same uptight girl he's always dating now; I don't like her-she looks like Tricia Nixon and acts just as dumb. Anyway, they went in our car 'cause Colin smashed up his and the girl went home early in a taxi 'cause she got mad when he tried to make out with her on the terrace, so it was just Scott and Colin and me driving home. We parked down by Lake Waloon and they both fucked me at the same time. Out of sight! Scott was in my pussy-he has a huge cock, almost as big as Ted Comfort's-and Colin was in my ass. Wow! That was the first time someone fucked me in the ass and was it ever exciting, especially with the other cock in my cunt. And I feel so glad that Colin-likes me again-maybe he'll wise up and ask me out instead of that stupid goodie-goodie."
This was too much! Denise flopped limply back on her daughter's bed, beside the fluffy stuffed dog Tracey'd had since she was a little girl. Well, she surely wasn't a little girl anymore-she was a common slut! Imagine liking being anally abused? Why, she'd left her husband for raping her in the rectum!
The young divorcee's eyes drifted shut, and her daughter's disgraceful diary fell from her numb fingers onto the floor. Years vanished as if by magic, and imagination transported her back to the cramped, artsy-craftsy apartment in Chicago's Hyde Park section which she'd inhabited together with her husband, Wade Hardwell, and her two tiny daughters, and, usually, a motley collection of Wade's beatnik friends. No, the anal rape hadn't been the only reason she'd walked out on her husband-it had merely been the straw which broke the camel's back.
Wade had been the handsomest guy she'd ever seen when he came hitchhiking through northern Michigan and she and Cousin Norman had picked him up one hot afternoon in August of 1958. He'd reminded her of the photograph in her English Literature book of the romantic poet, Lord Byron-same dark head of curls, brooding eyes and sensitive mouth, some lean, chiseled features-and sure enough, he turned out to be a writer, albeit unpublished, on a pilgrimage to Hemingway's boyhood countryside. Arrows of excitement shot from the top of her ponytail to the toes of her bobby socks, and she knew this must be Love At First Sight.
"He's a ne'er-do-well," warned Grandpa. "A born loser. I know the type."
"Sissy schmuck can't even handle a sailboat," scoffed Cousin Norm.
Denise paid absolutely no attention. She was head-over-heels in love with Wade, who wooed her with romantic poems and pretty watercolor sketches and gentle caresses instead of trying to get his hands inside her panties the minute you let him kiss you, like Ted Comfort-the only guy in town worth mentioning-had. Much to Grandfather's annoyance, she offered to let him camp in their big back yard.
"Enough's enough!" proclaimed Grandpa after supporting his unwelcome guest for some ten days. "That fellow's bad luck if I ever saw it, and I don't understand why you're all starry-eyed over a penniless poet when you turn down dates from a good man like Teddy Comfort. I thought you had more sense than that."
"I detest Ted," she'd replied haughtily. "He's a vulgar creep!"
"Have it your way, but one thing's sure: the Hartwell kid's not staying another night on my property. And you can just go and tell him to start packing up his gear right now."
"You're throwing him out?" her voice shrilled. "You can't do that!"
"I can, and I sure as hell am. With the greatest of pleasure."
"If he leaves, I leave with him!"
That was exactly what she'd done, withdrawing her $733.00 college savings account to purchase two tickets to Chicago. First-class private compartment tickets, of course, so that the honeymoon night could be consummated in style. Denise hadn't expected her strong-willed grandfather to ever forgive her, but after some six months or so he began answering letters in his usual warm way. No financial aid was ever forthcoming-"You've made your bed, and now you have to lie in it. . . "-and so when he died five years later she was extremely surprised to discover he'd left his three houses and considerable acres of property around Birch Bay to her.
By now, after supporting Wade through his various unsuccessful ventures into the arts, the weary young wife had few illusions left about their marriage. All during her first pregnancy she'd done secretarial work at the University of Chicago so he could continue his literature courses, and after he'd flunked his exams and decided his true vocation was drawing and painting, she'd borrowed a typewriter and taken in work in between washing diapers and making formulas to pay his Art Institute tuition. Wade switched to the drama department and made some contacts which got him advertising jobs ... she'd hoped to be able to stop slaving away, but somehow his artistic temperament didn't enable him to arrive on time, and if he did get some money, he and his horrible beatnik friends drank it up before she could pay the rent and grocery bill. Finally he'd floated into photography, pawning his expensive art materials to buy a Nikon. Her second pregnancy was spent clerking in Marshall Field's book department during the day and typing a revolting pornographic manuscript for fifty cents a page at nights.
She was only twenty-three, but there was a hardness in her eyes, a bitterness in her voice, and a very cynical streak to her character.
As if her husband's irresponsibility weren't bad enough, there were his disgusting ideas about what constituted a good time in bed. Denise considered herself a modern, healthy liberated young woman; sex was biologically necessary for producing offspring, and was also a natural physical need. However, there were limits. She liked it when Wade lay on top of her under the covers and fondled her breasts and pussy and then put his penis inside her vagina and brought her to orgasm, like any normal woman, but he didn't ever do it that way. Pretty soon she stopped climaxing altogether, for every time they got into bed he had some new kinky, perverse position he wanted to try. Oral sex ... upside-down and inside-out and backwards positions ... coming into her from behind while she kneeled like a canine bitch ... and finally the ultimate horror-anal intercourse.
On the day she'd received the letter about Gramps' will, he'd come home half-intoxicated and informed her that he was selling his camera equipment, buying a guitar, and singing up for private lessons with a successful folk singer in a coffeehouse he and his greasy buddies frequented. She'd blown her top, and he'd lost
J his temper too and raped her back there. Next morning, she and the kids were on a train on their way back to Michigan.
After the ultimate humiliation of having cum with her drunken husband's thick cock pulsing in her anus and his indecent middle finger fiddling around inside her pussy, how could she stay another day in the same house with him?
"But I didn't want to remember that!" Denise muttered.
The past evaporated into the present and here she was lying weakly on her daughter's bed. And there, beside her sandaled feet, lay that damning diary. . . Suddenly, something clicked inside the worried parent's brain and she snatched the slim volume up from the floor and thumbed through it in search for another mention of Mr. Theodore Comfort's name. Ahah! Here was the answer to why her innocent child had been transformed into a debauched little whore!
"Yesterday was the most important day of my life! First, the fantastic morning! Ted turned me into a REAL WOMAN! It's fantastic that he thinks I'm sexy and a good fuck! I really love him like crazy!
"Then Colin Highsmith invited me to a party, only it was really an orgy. I acted like a whore and it felt fabulous! Who cares if..."
Red-hot anger flooded through Mrs. Aronson's veins as she slammed the little journal shut and threw it onto the floor. No need to suffer through more of the prurient outpourings of her abused adolescent's sex-crazed soul ... Now was the moment for drastic action. Comfort, the criminal culprit, the child-corrupting villain, was not going to get away with this atrocity!
For once, the militant Feminist was wearing a skirt-all her jeans were hanging out on the line to dry, for as a way to procrastinate from her outline she'd done a rare load of wash. She passed a full-length mirror on her furious flight out of the house, but didn't waste time inspecting her appearance and was quite unconscious of how voluptuous her body looked in the tight cotton shift she'd borrowed from her daughter's extensive wardrobe.
She was equally unconscious of the strange stirrings of desire which had awoken in her frustrated loins upon reading Tracey's salacious diary and remembering her ex-husband's bawdy sexual inclinations. Her panty crotch band was damp and her uncovered breasts were hot and swollen, but she thought only of Revenge as she sped recklessly down toward the harbor.