Free Cannibals and Missionaries by Mary McCarthy Page A

note of this classic mistake and made up her mind to learn from it. A woman had the advantage of being able to discard an outgrown spouse without being bled for alimony, but even so, casting off a husband who had become too small for you, like a child’s pair of shoes, was bound to be painful and exhausting. Aileen was careful with her energy, which she kept for her career, her family, and her friendships. From the little experience she had had of it, she wanted no truck with remorse.
    If it had not been for her family, she might have married nonetheless—the inevitable childhood sweetheart, who was still in Fayetteville and a doctor. But her family gave her the emotional nourishment and sense of belonging a woman needed. She was close to her brothers and sisters, all settled in Fayetteville, and truly loved her mother, an intelligent woman (even if she had only a high-school diploma) from whom she had got her brains. Once her Papa had died, her Mamma had wonderfully grown and developed, politically as well as culturally—she had been in the local anti-Vietnam-war movement, written regular letters of support and advice to Senator Fulbright, and at the age of seventy-one had got on a bus to Washington to march in a demonstration. Aileen had been helping her family ever since she had left home. In the summers, she insisted on paying her keep, though her mother now was reasonably well fixed, with her father’s life-insurance and the widow’s benefits she drew from the federal government—Papa had been a mailman. Mamma owned the house free and clear, rented rooms to students during the term, and occasionally gave a hand to her former boss, who was now eighty, with the accounts and inventory in the old feed store, which had expanded into a big hardware and housewares business and was mainly run by his daughter.
    It would not have surprised Aileen if her Mamma had married again; she had gentlemen friends who sat on the porch or in the “den” with her and took her out riding on Sundays. At seventy-six, she did not feel too old for sex, apparently: she had had it with Aileen’s father right up to the end, she confided, and still “missed him that way.” But you did not need to get married for that, fortunately. There was always somebody who wanted to sleep with you, Aileen had found. That was one of the surprises of middle age—she would never have imagined when she was young that if you put some perfume on and left your room door on the latch in the Statler Hilton during the MLA meeting, a distinguished Russian specialist would come gliding to your bed. It had happened just this Christmas.
    As Aileen saw it, sex gave a woman only two problems. Contraception was no longer a worry, thanks to the menopause, which she had completed, with gratitude, last summer, but, as that problem had receded, the other—taking care with whom you did it and where—had become more acute. Permissiveness did not extend to older females—even Mamma was criticized if she pulled the shades when entertaining—still less to older heads of female institutions. Most married men could be relied on for discretion; they had their own motives for concealment. Nevertheless she had made it a rule not to be tempted by a member of the faculty, no matter how attractive, and in the case of a visiting lecturer to respect the prohibition laid down for students—not on college property. Her classicist had been an exception. The first time, it had happened in her house, and the next morning, before the maid came, she had had to wash the sheet and iron it by hand—taking it to the laundromat would have been too risky. After that they had met in Boston hotels.
    In general nowadays she kept sex for vacations and the professional conferences that figured more and more on her calendar. Some of her nicest memories were of “stolen” interludes during forums and panels with interesting men whom she never expected to see again. And if sometimes their paths did