Free Stepping by Nancy Thayer Page A

bathroom and lock the door? Why must they then always fall against a chest and bruise their heads? Why do they climb my leg when I try to talk on the phone? Why won’t they eat their food properly when Charlie tells them to eat their food properly?) We put up with things from our little children that would make us punch a stranger in the nose, and we don’t hate or even dislike them for it. We know they are children , they are trying. We can see the pieces coming together; each day they do a little better than the day before. We love our children even when we hate them, and sometimes when they fix us with a particularly nasty sulky glare, we grab them and squeeze them against us and blow kisses under their chins and onto their tummies until they squeal with laughter.
* * *
    But in 1965, when Caroline was ten and Cathy was seven, and I had no children and didn’t want any, I didn’t have an inkling of any of this. And the women who were my friends didn’t have children, and the women I knew who had children weren’t my friends and never discussed the subject. I honestly thought the women who were mothers were all placidly, smugly, properly happy. I thought that other women were capable of finding instantly a pure, unadulterated happiness merely from being with children. I, on the other hand, still found children boring and bothersome. I was afraid there was somethingwrong with me, something missing, I was glad Charlie and I had agreed to have no children of our own. I was already quite sure that his two girls would be more than enough.
    It was in the sixth week of that first summer when the girls first stayed with us that Charlie said to me, “Come outside. I’d like to talk with you a minute.”
    It was midmorning. I had finished breakfast—bacon, sweet cereal, toast, honey, cocoa, orange juice, and no yucky eggs—and Caroline and Cathy were watching some ridiculous comedy show on television, and I had just done the dishes. I was thrilled to be invited to a private conversation with Charlie; we hadn’t had one, except whispered bedroom ones, for weeks.
    I poured myself another cup of coffee and went out the back door into the sunshine. It was a weekday, and we were back in Kansas City so that Charlie could work on his projects. The backyard of our little house was small, but lovely, with a brick patio enclosing a small lily pond with a bench by it under a lyre tree. Grass and flowers. Birds singing. It was August, a hot, humid Missouri day, and I was wearing shorts and a halter top. I sank into a lounge chair and closed my eyes. For a moment I relaxed. I was happy. The sun made me expand; I felt sexy; and then Charlie sat down next to me, pushing against my legs. I sat up and pulled him to me and kissed him. I hadn’t kissed him in the daytime for weeks.
    Charlie pulled away. “It’s bad news, trooper,” he said. Before I could guess, he continued, “I’m not going to the party. The girls don’t want to be left with a sitter.”
    I gaped. The party was for me the highlight, the Christmas present, the coup , of the summer. A famous woman intellectual and writer was coming to the university to give a lecture, and afterward the chancellor of the university was holding a small reception-cocktail party in her honor. Only forty people out of the whole faculty had been invited, and “Dr. and Mrs. Charles Everett Campbell” were two of them. Not even Anthony had been invited. I was longing to just look at the famous intellectual woman up close, to see whether she was real, to hear her speak in her own voice, impromptu, instead of off a printed page. I had planned to wear something brown and drab so that she would see instantly that I was a serious student and not just a flighty cutesy girl. I was hoping she would look at me, talk to me, say just a few words, contact me, touch me, passsomething on.
    “What?” I asked Charlie when I could get my mind to work.
    “I’m not going to the party. I’m sorry. I’ve