Unaccompanied Women Read online

  In The Last Gift of Time: Living Beyond Sixty, Carolyn Heilbron wrote, “Seventy does terrible things to a woman’s face.” It does, and not just to her face. Carolyn Heilbron, at seventy-six, killed herself, and, since she left no note, we can only guess at her reasons. I cannot believe it was vanity, that the damage to her face wrought by age would drive her to her death. But suicide is so cruel to those left behind that one wonders how anyone of sound mind could do it. How I wish Heilbron had left us something in writing about how she knew it was time to end her life. She wrote us about living after sixty. Couldn’t she have stayed the course and told us how to live with a face badly treated by time? Well, she doesn’t owe any of us, I guess. It’s just that she left a lot of readers unfinished; we had hoped she would help us all the way to the end.

  At a reading in Arizona a young man at the end of the line, apparently unfazed by my seventy-one-year-old face, stays to tell me that I am “tantric kundalini,” whatever that is. Because he is too stoned to explain, he weaves off into the night, leaving me face-to-face with a woman who sat riveted during the reading, who hands me her book to be signed, and who whispers, though we are the only ones in the room, “I am seventy-three and want so much to have a man in my life. But my belly has dropped and rubbed all my pubic hair off. I’m so afraid that any man would run away in disgust. I know about plastic surgery and tummy tucks and all that, but I just don’t have that kind of money.” She drops into a chair and sighs, “What should I do?” I could say “Undress fast.” But I don’t; neither do I say “Go online.” I say what perhaps is true, “I think men see different things.”

  Back home I call John, my New England cabin-in-the-woods John, my great good friend with whom I have enjoyed long hours of sex—lights off, my choice. I ask, “Do you think men don’t see the imperfections of women’s bodies when they make love?” John answers, “Oh, no! I’m a real lookist, most men are. I like to see everything.” I am surprised. Given my imperfections and John’s enjoyment of the visual—apparently he can see in the dark—how is it that he takes such pleasure from me? He says, “Men are not nearly as hard on women as women are on themselves.”

  True. Feasting as we do on a steady diet provided by women’s magazines, it is no wonder we doubt ourselves. So we paint, shave, and spray, and hope to god we smell like gardens, at least until after he goes home. If he stays the night, my friend Julie programs herself to wake up very, very early, so that while he is still asleep she can apply makeup anew. Julie’s latest beau, with whom she has been intimate for over a year, has never seen her without her face on. She is twenty-seven. She plans to stay forever young, and when the powder and the paint are not enough, she will look to surgery to lend a helping hand, or a face or a breast or a belly. Given that most of us do not have Julie’s discipline, that we do not take full advantage of the wonders of cosmetics, that we lack the money and the urge to reconstruct our bodies, it’s amazing we get laid at all. John must be right: Men are much easier on us than we are.

  When I think about the bodies of the men I have come to know, when I recall the enjoyment I took from a body that was seventy-five years old, a body that was thirty-two, and a few in between, I remind myself that much of the pleasure came because I liked, even loved, the person who inhabited that body. I remember unhappy encounters with men whose bodies became repellent to me, not because they were ugly or old, but because the men who wore them were selfish or greedy or ill-tempered.

  i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing.

  —E. E. CUMMINGS, from Sonnet XXIV

  Better cummings than Vogue, better Whitman than Harper’s Bazaar, better John than our mirrors.

  And best of all, Graham, my favorite person in my favorite body, phones. He is repentant, not about marrying but about not telling me in person, such as the last time we had lunch in New York, when he knew he would be getting married and said nothing. “I wanted to tell you,” he says, “but I just couldn’t find the words.” I am so happy to hear his voice, to hope that he will enrich my life again, that I do not scold, upbraid, or otherwise chide him for his lapse, and soon we ease into talking once again about everything, about Thucydides—he knows more than I—about George Eliot—I know more than he. Our conversation runs in and out and in between and fills the gaps of my loneliness. For a time we are together, and I am soothed and at the same time exhilarated. I love what he does to my mind. He forces it awake; he keeps it running, though not always smoothly. At times my missing of him becomes palpable and I stumble, lose my train of thought, and then he says, “I miss you,” and I say it back, and for that small moment everything is right.

  This love affair between a man of thirty-six and a woman of seventy-one is odd but no less real for being so. “I worry about you sometimes,” he says, referring I suppose to my dui’s, those impassioned e-mails I fire off in the dead of night. I am surprised, and say so: “Why would you worry about me?” And he says, “Because you are the woman I would have married.” I am moved to tears with longing and love for this man, with despair and regret for what cannot be, but I know the right answer, and so I stop my tears and say, clearly and with certainty, “Yes.” And we fall silent.

  CHAPTER 14

  passionate exile

  You may forget but

  Let me tell you

  this: someone in

  some future time

  will think of us.

  —SAPPHO

  SOMETIMES THE TELEVISED images of Muslim women swathed in robes spark brief envy in me: Bodies are for keeping secret, what’s wrong with that? How freeing it must be to not worry about skirts that are too short or too long or tops that are too tight or not tight enough. For heaven’s sake, what’s wrong with me? Freedom through erasure of all things feminine? Of course not, and these same images inspire my anger; these women in head scarves and long robes wear their subjugation for all the world to see. Who was it who said that the first act of any authoritarian government, religious or political, was the subjugation of its women? How dare any religion, any culture, any political system bind up its women, insist that women hide themselves for the sake of purity, when what it’s really all about is power.

  I am joined in my condemnation of such governments by my friend Zoreh, who ought to know, whose experience is firsthand. Zoreh grew up in Iran. As we come to know and like each other, Zoreh and her Persian friends and family will dispossess me of my self-absorption and replace it with a fascination for her and the world from which she comes. I welcome the change, the chance to turn off the burners, front and back, where love and loneliness and desire threaten to boil over or, worse, curdle into something foul. I am incensed: Graham is going to Italy without me. Of course without me. He is taking his wife. They will have a good time in Italy without me. I want to go to Italy. With Graham. But I am not for public consumption. It’s fine with Graham when we sit across from each other in a restaurant and he looks at me all moony-eyed until I say, “Stop looking at me like that; people will see.” His green eyes are practically melting into his salad. “Like what?” he asks, pretending innocence. “You know, that love stuff.” He smiles, leans across the table, takes my hand, and says, “In the entire world there is no one like you.” Now who’s melting? But stay in your seat, Jane, don’t travel abroad, lie low; I am pissed. Obviously my sense of the other needs stoking. Zoreh no doubt knows many men and, while the image I have of Iranian men is not to their credit, in the pictures I have seen of them they are very handsome. I can look but not touch. A valuable lesson in self-control.

  At our first meeting at a bookstore in San Francisco, Zoreh, elegant in Western dress, stood out in the crowd of people come to hear me read. I was briefly uncomfortable. Her dark eyes were unwavering, and they seemed never to leave my face. What could she want of me? She waited in line for me to sign her book, said a heartfelt thank you, thank you, and a week later at another reading was there again. Again she bought a book, asked me to sign it, said, “Thank you so m
uch” in a voice as rich and dark as the Turkish coffee she would serve me in a few weeks’ time. She wrote me notes inviting me to her home for tea, offering anything I might need anytime at all. And finally I accepted her invitation to morning coffee. “Turkish,” Zoreh will tell me, “best in world.”

  I was reluctant to accept. There was an intensity in Zoreh that I found unsettling. I wondered about her persistence in befriending me; what could she want? Still, she was fascinating and beautiful and held worlds of secrets I wanted to learn. Surely the world from which she came was nothing like mine, nor could the two of us be in any way alike.

  It is eleven o’clock in the morning, and the ad for Zoreh’s house, were it for sale, would read something like, Grand Lake area, 5 +bdrms/3 baths, formal dining room, 2 fireplaces, sweeping Bay views, $2.2 million. This ad would not include washer/dryer or washer/dryer hookups. No, that would be tacky, for in this house it’s a given that someone else, not the owner, will trouble herself with laundry. For a moment I don’t even want this house; it’s too grand. But in the next instant I know that if someone gave it to me and promised I could stay forever, I would manage. I would even grow to feel at home here.

  I roam from room to room, all of them smelling faintly of incense, which Zoreh tells me is jasmine. “And you can get it to put on your body, too.” Outside the windows of the enormous kitchen it is raining, and the overflow from the hot tub into the blue, blue waters of the swimming pool makes a lovely waterfall. Zoreh tells me, “This Turkish coffee you can sip, not like espresso, which is bad-tasting. And then I will give you a wonderful lunch.” Oh boy, I am stuck here in this great big house for a while.

  Zoreh is wearing her hair loose today. It undulates in deep dark waves halfway down her back, and frames her face, which is free of makeup and has high cheekbones. Her dark eyes are shaped like the almonds in the dish she has placed before me. It is easy to imagine that face framed in a black scarf, as it was when she lived in Iran. Here she wears jeans and a turtleneck that fit her slim body well. It is not so easy to imagine her shapeless in a robe intended to disguise her femaleness, a robe she wore for many years.

  She turns from the sink, where she has been washing lettuce leaves for our salad, and says to me, “You are so free! Iranian women think they are free. And they are, compared to women in Afghanistan, but they are not really. American women are much freer, and you . . . you are freer even than that!” I decide not to confide in her the abiding self-consciousness I feel about my body, though there is something in Zoreh that makes me think my doing so would not change her opinion. Zoreh has made up her mind: I am freer than anybody, and that’s that.

  “I tell my daughters, both of them, stay away from Iranian men, and look—both of them, who do they marry? Iranian men.” She laughs the rueful laugh of parents everywhere. “But my younger daughter, her husband, this boy, has lived in America for many years; he is the most gentle young man. My daughter is fortunate.” She stirs the couscous she has made for our lunch. “All Iranian women are good cooks,” she says. “In my culture women learn early on from their mothers about herbs and spices, about basmati rice, how not to let it get sticky, must be fluffy. I cook for many people even when there are only a few.” She places a bowl of dried fruit and nuts on the counter and says something she will repeat in one way or another every time we meet: “In my country people get together all the time—young people and old people and rich and poor—we are always getting together to talk and to laugh and do much dancing.” Zoreh’s energy electrifies me into silence, and I imagine her dancing, whirling around a room, a beautiful and exotic creature. “In Iran we have wonderful times inside our houses; you can do whatever you like inside your home.”

  Where is Zoreh’s husband? Surely she does not live in this great big house all alone. As if she has read my mind, she says, “My daughter and her wonderful husband live with me. They go to college.” So where is Zoreh’s husband, the father of this fine daughter married to this wonderful young man, so enlightened and kind, so not like Iranian men? I don’t know how hard to press or whether to press at all. I am a guest so, at least for the moment, I will act like one. Besides, Zoreh needs no encouragement to talk. “Take more,” she says, “chicken, couscous, you eat too little.” I take more, and she hands me a platter of beets. Lonely for the sound of my own voice, I say, “I love beets. I can never get enough beets. The other day I bought one beet, boiled it, and ate it just like an apple.” I marvel silently at my talent for small talk—and my first language is English. “Now tea,” she says, and rises from her chair.

  “My daughters’ father lives in Iran. I am divorced three years. He is a kind man, a gentle man, wealthy, good father, everyone likes him, but . . . two of us, we fight from very beginning, never stop. My daughters get grown before divorce. Never would I get divorced in Iran. In Iran man gets the children, just automatically; he gets the house. Single woman in Iran no one will rent her a place to live—’Where is the husband?’ they want to know. I come here to get divorced. Here are rights. But I wait long time for my green card. Now I am a single woman.” She tosses a strand of hair back over her shoulder. “I love parties. I love people coming to my house, to cook for them, to dance. My husband very, very jealous all the time, he thinks I’m flirting, thinks I have eyes for other men. No, no, I do not, I just am happy to be with people, but he never believes me. So fighting goes on and on. My husband did not want me to come here. ‘If you go there,’ he tells me, ‘I will lose you. I don’t want to lose you.’ I tell him, ‘It is too late. You have already lost me.’” She piles more couscous onto my plate. “You eat.” I obey.

  Outside the window the autumn rains pelt her herb garden and her fig trees and her vegetable garden, all of them thriving through her own efforts. “In Iran there are four seasons, each one different. In Iran it snows in winter. Winter very cold, snow on the mountains. Very beautiful.” She catches herself from her wistfulness and says, “March twenty-six is our new year. It is our tradition to start over, to throw out the old, begin the new—new food, new clothes, new thoughts. I will have party here. I will invite you. Singing and dancing and much food. I will cook.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and rise to leave.

  “Can you wait one minute?” she asks. “I want to ask you something. What is it with Americans?” Ah, that’s it; she thinks I know something about Americans. And then she says, “When I moved here eight years ago, I give party. I go up and down the street inviting all the neighbors. At the party one man who lives next to me here”—she points to her left—”says to another man who lives next to me there”—she points to her right—” ‘You look familiar, don’t I know you from somewhere?’” Zoreh is scandalized. “They are neighbors for twenty years and they don’t know each other!” She looks at me expectantly and says, “Why is that?”

  Hell, I don’t know. I mumble something about Americans and work, how people here work hard all day and are just too tired. Zoreh interrupts me: “American women are lazy.” Oh boy, here we go; I’m going to have to defend American women. Can I? Will I want to? I needn’t worry, for Zoreh is on a tear. “Let me tell you, you listen. Iranian man married to Iranian woman: end of day, both work, man brings home four people, surprise, for dinner, not a problem. Not so for America. Iranian man married to American woman says, ‘I don’t dare do such a thing! My wife will be angry!’ American women spoiled.”

  I nod, yes, American women are spoiled. Of course, being one, I don’t think we are, or at least I’m not. Though here I sit while Zoreh serves me this wonderful food she has cooked in this lovely room overlooking her gardens. It comes to me then that Zoreh doesn’t want answers from me. She wants to talk to someone who will listen to her. She wants to cook for someone who will eat with her. I rise to go, and she says, “If you need a place to come, to write, to stay anytime, as long as you want, you can come here.” She wants to live with someone. She wants to spend her generosity, to share her warmth and her talents and her love, if not wi
th a man—never a Persian man—then with me. She would be happy to spoil me. She is remarkable.

  I waddle down the driveway, chewing on my Iranian pistachio candy, and turn to wave good-bye to Zoreh. She is not there. But a minute later here she comes, running down the driveway, waving something in her hand. “Wait! Wait!” she calls. I stop the car, and Zoreh thrusts a jar through the open window. “Beets,” she says. “From my garden. For you.”

  I have spent the morning with a woman who thinks of others, who cooks for others, gardens for others, who does not dwell on the misfortunes of her life, past or present, who ought to provide a model for me to follow. I will consign Graham to oblivion while I practice extending my frame of reference beyond the two of us. With this in mind and the hope that it rains for forty days and forty nights in Italy, I accept at once Zoreh’s invitation to dinner.