Free The Marriage Bed by Constance Beresford-Howe Page B

sat down beside her dentist and lit a cigarette.
    “You’re still up all night with Baby?” Randy asked. He glanced with some apprehension at Martha as she vigorously rooted and sucked.
    “One of us has to rock or walk her half the night. Anne does the feed and walks the floor awhile, then I take over, rock and walk. If that doesn’t work, I put her in the pram and we go out. Motion therapy. Last night I shoved her all the way to Ontario Place, nearly, at ten miles an hour. Anyhow, that’s how it felt.”
    “What an awful warning,” murmured Bonnie.
    “Neither of mine ever had colic,” remarked Tim’s wife, touching her blonde chignon complacently. “In fact, I don’t believe there is such a thing. You shouldn’t give in to her when she cries. You’re making yourselves into slaves.”
    Ross and I both eyed her without friendliness.
    “Maybe those kibbutzes are the best places for little kids,” somebody said vaguely.
    “No, there’s no good, cheap substitute for marriage,” said Randy’s pale wife wistfully, her hand creeping into his.
    “Man, haven’t you heard? It’s been
found,
” said Bonnie. She shot one smoke ring neatly through the other. The dentist looked at her with his shallow black eyes that could not be seen to express anything.
    “Nobody – but nobody –” she went on, “needs to hold out their wrists for the old cuffs. Holy matrimony my ass. It’s the biggest con game ever sold to generations of suckers.”
    Somebody loyal among the married raised a mild demur, but Bonnie only crossed her magnificent legs and focussed on him the full beam of her bright, intelligent blue eyes.
    “Listen, friend. I’ve got a sister now thirty-one. She got married at nineteen. Two instant kids. Hubby still in college, so they’re poor as lice for years. Finally he gets qualified, but they’re still all screwed up with a mortgage and kids’ teeth to get straight. Year after year, no holidays, no decent clothes, just running between supermarkets to pick up specials. Freezing the old home-grown vegetables, you know? Scraping wax off the goddam kitchen floor. Like that. And for what? Because last month hubby dear told her he’d like a divorce, please, so he can marry a drive-in waitress. That’s the reward she got for following all the rules.”
    “Oh, come on. Marriage doesn’t work by rules,” I protested.
    “No, it works because a lot of crazy women are still willing to give up their own lives and live in chains. They still believe all that jazz about Adam’s rib, I guess.”
    One or two of the wives began to speak at once, but Bonnie’s voice, with a considerable edge to it, overrode theirs. “Balls,” she said. (How I wished Edwina were still with us.) “Finks like you only show how brainwashed you are. It’s all those centuries of it – lying on your backs in the victim position. Some of you actually
like
it there. But that’s no excuse.”
    “Bonnie, you’re too naive,” said Ross. “You actually believe there’s such a thing as freedom? For male
or
female? You know damn well nobody’s free. Nobody human, that is.”
    “I am, chum.”
    “Come on, be honest. When a woman blames male-dominated society and all that crap for her personal unhappiness, she is just a whining cop-out.”
    “I am not personally unhappy,” said Bonnie with cold distinctness.
    “Wait, I never said that.”
    “Just the same, personal failure is personal failure,” I put in, attempting to soothe what was evidently keen irritation on both sides. “It isn’t marriage that’s wrong, it’s your sister’s priorities. Scraping wax – Christ, no wonder he took off.”
    At once Bonnie turned a flick-knife glance on me.
    “You know damn well – or you ought to – for a bright woman, marriage is one those torture beds, too long or too short, she can never really fit, even if she kills herself trying. You’d admit it, Anne, if you had the guts.”
    “Now just you hold on,” said Ross sharply.