Who Do You Think You Are

had no lecture prepared. He didn’t speak for a long time but followed her around the house while she kept justifying herself, complaining. It was as if he wanted her to go on talking, though he couldn’t credit what she was saying, because it would be much worse if she stopped.
    She didn’t tell him the whole truth. She said that she had “had an affair” with Clifford, and by the telling gave herself a dim secondhand sort of comfort, which was pierced, presently, but not really destroyed, by Patrick’s look and silence. It seemed ill-timed, unfair of him, to show such a bare face, such an inappropriate undigestible chunk of grief.
    Then the phone rang, and she thought it would be Clifford, experiencing a change of heart. It was not Clifford, it was a man she had met at Jocelyn’s party. He said he was directing a radio play, and he needed a country girl. He remembered her accent.
    Not Clifford.
    She would rather not think of any of this. She prefers to see through metal window-frames of dripping cedars and salmonberry bushes and the proliferating mortal greenery of the rain forest some small views of lost daily life. Anna’s yellow slicker. The smoke from Jocelyn’s foul fire.
    “D O YOU WANT TO SEE the junk I’ve been buying?” said Jocelyn, and took Rose upstairs. She showed her an embroidered skirt and a deep-red satin blouse. A daffodil-colored silk pajama suit. A long shapeless rough-woven dress from Ireland.
    “I’m spending a fortune. What I would once have thought was a fortune. It took me so long. It took us both so long, just to be able to spend money. We could not bring ourselves to do it. We despised people who had color television. And you know something—color television is great! We sit around now and say, what would we like? Maybe one of those little toaster-ovens for the cottage? Maybe I’d like a hair blower? All those things everybody else has known about for years but we thought we were too good for. You know what we are, we say to each other? We’re Consumers! And it’s Okay!
    “And not just paintings and records and books. We always knew they were okay. Color T.V.! Hair dryers! Waffle irons!”
    “Remote-control birdcages!” Rose cried cheerfully.
    “That’s the idea.”
    “Heated towels.”
    “Heated towel racks, dummy! They’re lovely.”
    “Electric carving knives, electric toothbrushes, electric toothpicks.” “Some of those things are not as bad as they sound. Really they’re not.”
    A NOTHER TIME when Rose came down Jocelyn and Clifford had a party. When everyone had gone home the three of them, Jocelyn and Clifford and Rose, sat around on the living-room floor, all fairly drunk, and very comfortable. The party had gone well. Rose was feeling a remote and wistful lust; a memory of lust, maybe. Jocelyn said she didn’t want to go to bed.
    “What can we do?” said Rose. “We shouldn’t drink any more.” “We could make love,” Clifford said.
    Jocelyn and Rose said, “Really?” at exactly the same time. Then they linked their little fingers and said, “Smoke goes up the chimney.”
    Following which, Clifford removed their clothes. They didn’t shiver, it was warm in front of the fire. Clifford kept switching his attention nicely from one to the other. He got out of his own clothes as well. Rose felt curious, disbelieving, hardly willing, slightly aroused and, at some level she was too sluggish to reach for, appalled and sad. Though Clifford paid preliminary homage to them both, she was the one he finally made love to, rather quickly on the nubbly hooked rug. Jocelyn seemed to hover above them making comforting noises of assent.
    The next morning Rose had to go out before Jocelyn and Clifford were awake. She had to go downtown on the subway. She found she was looking at men with that speculative hunger, that cold and hurtful need, which for a while she had been free of. She began to get very angry. She was angry at Clifford and Jocelyn. She felt that they had made a fool of her, cheated her; shown her a glaring lack, that otherwise she would not have been aware of. She resolved never to see them again and to write them a letter in which she would comment on their selfishness, obtuseness, and moral degeneracy. By the time she had the letter written to her own satisfaction, in her head, she was back in the country again and had calmed down. She decided not to write it. Sometime later she decided to go on being friends with Clifford and Jocelyn,