Community of Women

7

Television is many things to many people. To the great unwashed masses, it is a prime medium of entertainment, a big box which is turned on whenever there is anyone at home to watch it. To a top Hollywood director, it was a boon, in that there was finally an entertainment medium which was markedly inferior to motion pictures.

To Dave Whitcomb, television was a way to earn a living. To many Cheshire Point children, television was simply a substitute parent, ready and willing to spend time with them while their biological parents were drinking, dining or fornicating.

To Nan Haskell, television was a bore.

Nan hadn’t even wanted to get a set in the first place. She hardly ever watched it, and in Manhattan she and Howard had gotten along perfectly well without a set in the apartment. Now, in Cheshire Point, with two small sons in the house, the television was a permanent fixture. It stood on a teevee table in the family room in the basement of their split-level colonial. And now, for the first time in weeks, she was watching it.

Well, not exactly. She had the set turned on, and she was seated in front of it, and her eyes were pointed more or less in the direction of the flickering images on the 24-inch screen. But in another equally valid sense she was not watching television at all.

She did not hear what the fuzzyheaded announcer was saying, and she did not see what was going on upon the screen. She did not know what program she was watching, what channel she was tuned to, or what the hell she was doing in front of the television set, as far as that went. She was killing time, and the television set was on, and that was about all there was to it.

She focused her eyes upon the screen now. The announcer was selling soap, some brand-new washday product which would care for her washing machine and lighten her workday chore load. That, at least, was what the slick announcer was trying to palm off on her. She got to her feet, walked to the set, and flicked a knob that darkened the picture tube and halted the sound.

Then, remembering a picture starring David Niven, she drew back her foot to kick in the picture tube. She stopped just in time, turned on her heel and left the family room.

Everything was such a damned bore. Time was passing her by, time was all over the place and yet she was wasting all the time there was, letting the days sail by without doing anything, without accomplishing anything, without getting any place or doing anything at all.

Bored.

Bored.

Bored—

Read a book, she thought. Read a book, go to a movie, make a dress, hoe the garden, cut the lawn — but she did not want to do these things, had no desire to do these things.

Then what did she want?

She knew the answer to that question as well as she knew her own name, as well as she knew that she was bored. What she wanted was a change, a break in the established routine. The introduction of a new element into her life, the element of excitement.

Life had once been exciting. Once she had lived in such a manner that each day was a new adventure, an experiment in dynamic living. But now that period of her life seemed to have come to a sort of end, and that was unfortunate in the extreme. Now she was a wife and mother settled down in a split-level colonial in luxurious exurban Cheshire Point.

And bored to tears.

So, for the tenth or twentieth time that day, she thought of Ted Carr.

She did not think of him in terms of face and body, as a woman might think of a man with whom she was hazily considering the possibility of an extramarital affair. She did not think of him in specifically sexual terms, to be sure, but as a possible means of alleviating all that boredom, of changing all that dreadful monotony.

Great God in heaven, she thought. Now there was a fresh approach — going to bed with somebody else’s husband not because you were hot to trot but because you were bored stiff. Getting boffed not for the sheer joy of the boffing but because it might be a change. God!

Well, she thought, just for the sake of argument, what would it be like?

In the first place, it would be hidden. It would be something to be carried on in secret, something done on the sly. How? At her home, during the day when Howard and the kids were gone? That would be tough, since Ted had to be in town just as Howard did. In motels? That would be something pretty outré, signing in under an alias in a sleazy motel and stealing a few minutes’ worth of lust in a smelly bed. Or maybe, by God, they could do it in the back seat of a car. That would take her back to the days of her youth, all right.

But Ted had a sports car, and it would be difficult. Bucket seats were fine for riding, but—

Well, they could take the Caddy. Plenty of room in the Caddy. Even more room in the station wagon; just toss a mattress on the floor in back and you’re ready for action. Then—

Oh, it was ridiculous. The whole thing was insane and she had to forget about it. Had to forget all about it. Had to think about other things like when to pick up Skip and Danny, and what to wear to the PTA meeting, and what to have for dinner, and, well—

Boring.

Boring.

Boring!

She was just about to go to the station wagon and drive down to school to pick up the boys when the phone rang. She hesitated a moment, then went to the phone and lifted the receiver to her ear.

“Hello?”

Silence greeted her. She said hello again, then listened to gentle laughter come over the line.

“Hello yourself,” Ted Carr said. “How’ve you been feeling, Nan-O?”

“What do you want?”

“You.”

Just the single word, the second-person-singular pronoun. Just that. It made her gasp.

“You’ve got your nerve,” she said finally. “You’ve really got a hell of a lot of nerve, calling me like this.”

“Busy, Nan-O?”

“Damn it—”

“I just thought you might have been doing a little thinking, Nan-O. About our discussion last night.”

“Ted—”

“Because I still think we might have a ball,” he went on. “You’ve got beautiful breasts, Nan-O. I’d like to touch them. Kiss them, play with them. I want to get in your pants, Nan-O.”

She hated him. And yet his words were reaching her, getting to her. She squirmed uncomfortably, passion beginning to mount up unwillingly in her system.

“Hot, Nan-O. All hot and ready to go?”

“Ted—”

“Let me draw you a picture,” he went on. “You’ll be lying on a bed. You’ll have your skirt way up over your waist and your panties down around your knees. And I’ll be working you up, getting you so hot you can’t stand it. You’ll beg for it, Nan-O. You’ll crawl to me on your dimpled knees. And then—”

“Stop it!”

A wicked laugh. “I’ll ring off now, Nan-O. But think it over. I’ll call again soon.”

He hung up before she could answer him. Think about it?

She shuddered.

She could think of nothing else.