Free Other Women by Lisa Alther

out.”
    “So why did you do it?”
    There was a long pause. Good question, thought Caroline. It hadn’t occurred to her not to. She lowered her eyes to the box of IGA tissues on the carved wooden chest beside her. “Because I wanted you to like me.”
    They both blinked. Caroline froze, not daring to look up. Why in hell had she said that? It was a firm rule with her not to let people know what she wanted from them. I
    know what you want and you can’t have it.
    If you pretended you didn’t care, sometimes what you wanted came to you unasked. But in this particular case, she really didn’t care. Why should she care whether this aging British housewife liked her? She absolutely didn’t.
    Hannah felt herself blush, whether from embarrassment at such vulnerability or from a hot flash, she wasn’t sure. She fought an urge to assure Caroline that she did like her. It wasn’t the right time for reassurance. But how could anyone who’d been a mother not give it right then?
    “Do you feel you need to make lists for people to like you?”
    WOMEN
     
    Hannah asked kindly. She felt a stab of pain for that infant, so eager to please.
    “I feel I’d better do what they want, or there’s not a chance in hell,” Caroline was surprised to hear herself say.
    “Do you see where that comes from?”
    “What?”
    “That feeling. Do you remember telling me about trying all
    the
    time as a child to be helpful?”
    Caroline closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her nose. It looked to Hannah like a direct hit. After many direct hits, the point would begin to sink in.
    Gazing out the window across the yard where the stubble formed a five o’clock shadow on the dusting of new snow, Caroline recalled how the various maids used to set her mother’s hair. Caroline would stand in the corner of her dressing room, one foot atop the other, wishing she could help. Her mother laughed and gossiped with the maids, and almost purred when they massaged her neck.. Her brown satin dressing gown would fall open at the throat to reveal sculpted collarbones and soft hollows. If Caroline could do the things the maids did, her mother would act like that with her too.
    As Hannah watched Caroline’s eyes cloud over and narrow with pain, she reminded herself not to go too fast. If the pain was too great, Caroline would shut down. You had to balance their developing trust in you with the unveiling of their ancient sorrows. “You’ve been thinking this week about how people see you. Do you want to hear what I see?”
    “Yeah. Okay.” Caroline dug her fingers into the tweed sofa. What was the woman going to bitch about?
    She’d done the assignment the best she could. She couldn’t help it that she was a nonperson.
    “I see a kind, gentle, vulnerable person who’s been through some difficult stuff without losing those qualities.”
    Caroline looked up. For a moment her eyes met Hannah’s. Then she looked away quickly and studied the brass doorknob, frowning. It didn’t sound right. She remembered the radio program she, Tommy, and Howard listened to as kids, sitting as close as possible to the large wooden box with its fabric front, and shuddering with delicious terror as a voice leered, “Who
    knows
    what evil lurks in the hearts of
    48
    OTHER
    men …” If gentleness was what Hannah saw, she was less perceptive than she seemed.
    “What makes you say that?”
    Hannah shrugged. This assessment was so remote from what Carwas used to that she couldn’t even take it in. She would have argued with St. Peter that she wasn’t fit to enter heaven. “Your face, your expressions, the way you stand and sit, how you speak.”
    And not just Caroline, but most clients. She tried to hold that image in her mind as she worked with them-of affectionate, capable people, with an overlay of crap from things other people had laid on them when they were too little to protest. She shifted her gaze from Caroline’s troubled eyes, which were assessing her bare