In Every Woman's Life . . .

by Alix Kates Shulman

Overview

An insightful story of three women that wittily portrays the pleasures and pitfalls of marriage, parenthood, and being female in middle-class America
After the turmoil of the feminist movements of the 1960s and ’70s, three women are drawn together by family and friendship. Rosemary Streeter is a married mother of two who believes in the strength of family—even while having an affair. For Rosemary, “marriage is about family. It’s about raising children. It’s an economic arrangement. Passion has nothing to do with it, except maybe to get it started.” Meanwhile, hard-nosed, glamorous, and successful journalist Nora Kennedy claims to enjoy the freedom of being unmarried and childless, but secretly fantasizes about living with her married boyfriend. Rosemary’s teenage daughter, Daisy, struggles to acquire the wisdom of womanhood in the confusion of 1980s America.  Rich with humor and compassion about the complexities of marriage and everyday life, In Every Woman’s Life . . . offers a fresh perspective on the role of women in society and on the American family.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781453238387
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	04/03/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	358
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Alix Kates Shulman (b. 1932) is the celebrated author of fourteen books, including the bestselling novel Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen (1972), which established her as a primary figure in feminism’s second wave. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Shulman studied philosophy at Columbia University and received an MA at New York University. She became a political activist, joining the Congress of Racial Equality in 1961 and the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1967. Her other novels include Burning Questions (1978), On the Stroll (1981), In Every Woman’s Life . . . (1987), and Ménage (2012). She has also written the memoirs Drinking the Rain (1995), A Good Enough Daughter (1999), and To Love What Is (2008);a biography of Emma Goldman entitled To the Barricades (1971); and A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays: Four Decades of Feminist Writing (2012). Shulman lives in Manhattan and continues to speak frequently on issues such as writing, feminism, and reproductive choice.
Alix Kates Shulman (b. 1932) is the celebrated author of fourteen books, including the bestselling novel Memoirs of an Ex–Prom Queen (1972), which established her as a primary figure in feminism’s second wave. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Shulman studied philosophy at Columbia University and received an MA at New York University. She became a political activist, joining the Congress of Racial Equality in 1961 and the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1967. Her other novels include Burning Questions (1978), On the Stroll (1981), In Every Woman’s Life . . . (1987), and Ménage (2012). She has also written the memoirs Drinking the Rain (1995), A Good Enough Daughter (1999), and To Love What Is (2008);a biography of Emma Goldman entitled To the Barricades (1971); and A Marriage Agreement and Other Essays: Four Decades of Feminist Writing (2012). Shulman lives in Manhattan and continues to speak frequently on issues such as writing, feminism, and reproductive choice.

Read an Excerpt

In Every Woman's Life ...

---

By Alix Kates Shulman

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Copyright © 1987 Alix Kates Shulman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-3838-7

---

CHAPTER 1

At Home

* * *

1 In every woman's life a time must come to think about marriage. Once, that time was brief, to be seized in the moment, or anxiously borne, or boldly flung away; but now it seems to descend like a recurring dream to vex or tempt the troubled dreamer with secret longings and second thoughts—such are the uncertainties of the times.

Anyone peering into the sprawling East Side apartment of the Harold Streeter family to see Rosemary Streeter wipe her hands on a towel and peek into the oven at another masterly Sunday dinner (something special for everyone), while her humming husband pours steaming noodles into a bowl, would surely conclude that here all second thoughts had long since faded. On the marble hearth a brisk fire crackles. In the kitchen steam whistles in the kettle, duck crisps in the oven, noodles wallow in sesame sauce, newly ground coffee beans yield up their rich aroma. Though the bare branches of trees are not yet black against the pale city sky slowly advancing toward twilight, already in every room lights blaze, and behind closed doors the Streeter children's stereos and tape decks send waves of contrary vibrations merging in the charged interior.

Rosemary Streeter, dutiful wife, carefully closes the oven door. "The duck looks perfect. I just have to finish the sauce, then you can call the kids," she announces to Harold who, to the rhythm of a Verdi tune, is tossing the noodles Mrs. Scaggs made fresh on Friday before she left. But just as Rosemary turns back toward the stove, her nostrils are assaulted by a veiled golden memory that brings on a sudden love attack, raising her momentarily out of this kitchen, this marriage, this family to transport her across town to a top-floor studio off Central Park West where sunlight glints off a gold church dome through a sunny window. She can smell the lantana growing in a clay pot on the windowsill, taste the wine. She catches her breath and leans against the stove until the attack passes. Only then, returning, does she realize that she has left essential ingredients out of the dessert. "Damn!" she cries, almost in tears. "The vanilla! The rum!"

"What?" asks Harold, measuring coffee into a large Melitta. "Something the matter?"

If she acknowledges her lapse, everything may be revealed. In this apartment, large for New Yorkers—big master bedroom and rooms for each of the children, two bathrooms and a half, a spacious living room, a small study, and that rarity nowadays, a separate dining room off the new yellow kitchen—there is no place to hide her feelings except inside.

All her life she's loved two kinds of men: the ones she still desired after she knew they were wrong for her, and the ones she remained tied to long after she lost all desire. Between the two, she believes, she has everything. "Never mind," she says.

Rosemary is not the only one with secrets. Though no one is permitted to open a closed door without knocking, every Streeter feels the need to take certain additional precautions. Throughout the house, objects nestle in locked boxes, sealed envelopes,, secret codes, carefully disguised containers. Spider keeps his small collection of skin magazines in the same secret compartment he rigged behind his bed for his collection of precious gems when he was eight. Daisy hides the "speeches" and passionate poems she would be ashamed to have anyone see among the treasured pages of, respectively, Tolkien and Jane Eyre. On the hall desk, in the family's bulging red address book, Rosemary keeps certain numbers listed under the names of innocent acquaintances whose association with the fugitives they shield is too slim to make them suspect. Even the spice shelf and medicine cabinets, open to everyone, from time to time house controlled substances disguised as ordinary household oregano or vitamin C. And to Harold, the cylindrical chambers once used for kerosene at the bottoms of the antique lamps mounted on either side of the mantelpiece are a perfect hiding place for the thick rolls of large denomination bills he has been secretly accumulating for purposes of his own.

Sometimes the secrets bursting from the Streeter hearts are too large to be contained within their rooms, too explosive to be safely stored beneath the high ceilings of the comfortable East Side apartment. Then, like certain toxic wastes condemned to be endlessly transported from place to place at ever increasing danger to the populace because there is no acceptable repository for them, the secrets must be taken out into the world in search of an adequate hiding place. The danger of witnesses increases. Lies must be compounded. Acts that seem perfectly acceptable under ordinary circumstances—like standing in line at the post office—may suddenly leave one feeling vulnerable as a rabbit on the highway if one happens to be picking up mail under an assumed name.

Harold piles ice into four tall glasses, then covers the cubes with tap water. "I'll call them now," he says. He deposits the glasses on the table, wipes his hands on his pants, and sets off down the hall.

Spider (né Maximilian) Streeter lay on his bed with one arm behind his head and one long leg pounding the floor. The roar of the music left him oblivious of the ravenous roar of hunger waiting to be released with the first rap of his father's knock; his eye was following the intricate pattern etched by cracked-paint on the ceiling of his room. He could not remember a time when he had opened his eyes to any other country than the one of which his ceiling was a map. The last time the apartment had been painted he'd cried until they'd agreed to spare his ceiling, it was that intimate a part of him, and the next time it was threatened he would probably cry again. He had allowed his friend Frankie Herschel to name some of the provinces, and sometimes they spoke in codes derived from letters assigned to the mysterious overhead shapes, but he was still king of that land. He would go to dinner, he would fight with Daisy, he would probably get his father mad, and when he returned to his room his country would be carved even more deeply onto the sky of his universe. In his closet was a vast collection of road maps from every part of the United States that had occupied his recent childhood. Earlier, there had been dinosaurs, monsters, rocks, gems, keys, and every Dr. Seuss book ever written, but of these others he'd eventually grown tired, while his passion for road maps had deepened. Daisy got mere miniatures for every birthday and Christmas, while he got something real. Then, when his father left them one summer, he was able to follow his progress west, like a commander charting the movement of his troops.

Inside her room Daisy, squirming at her desk, attacked now her pencil, now her thumbnail, as if the efforts of her teeth could somehow peel open the secret answers to the questions on the blank application lying before her. Tell us in your own words whatever you want us to know about you. She knew there were right answers and wrong ones; the questions were traps; but she didn't know what or how much to reveal. The deadline for her applications was approaching, but Daisy could hardly answer the easy questions, like what field do you plan to major in, or describe your academic goals while at college, much less the impossible ones: Discuss the most significant experience in your secondary school years. Pose a question we should have asked on this application to enable us to know you and then answer it. If you could have been alive at any time in history, whom would you most like to have been and why? Justify. I wish, wrote Daisy, I were alive right now and I were myself, living this life, and my applications were finished, crammed from margin to margin with brilliant statements, and you were so impressed by my unusual qualities and first-rate qualifications that you decided to admit me to the college of my choice.

Harold's sharp knock against her door shoved her smack against a terrible realization. Of course! How had it escaped her before? She could not possibly tell the significant experiences of her life from the trivial ones until she knew what was waiting to happen to her; and how could she know what would happen to her until she knew if and where she'd be going to college? How could she divine a cause before she perceived the effect? It was hopeless. Anxiety clutched her heart and squeezed.

"Daisy? Spider? Dinner."

Laying aside the mutilated pencil, she leaped from her desk as if she had suddenly been released from some unjust punishment for an unknown offense. She waited for the violin phrase to end before pressing the off button, then ran down the hall to find the same station on the living room set. Reluctantly Spider swung his other leg to the floor. Upright, he had to pee. The rumble of hunger replaced the bass as he turned off his stereo and prepared to fight if necessary for the bathroom.

"That's nice, darling," said Rosemary, coming in from the kitchen with a large platter. "What is it?"

"Vivaldi, I think," said Daisy.

"Yes—but what?"

"Shh. We'll see in a minute."

Spider arrived in the dining room to find everyone already seated. He skidded to the table and leaped into his seat.

Harold flinched and cowered. "Please, Spider, try to sit in your chair, not pounce on it."

"Harold," cautioned Rosemary.

"Duck! Yay!" yelled oblivious Spider, clapping his hands in a noisy new fashion that proclaimed his ineluctable presence.

Daisy shot a palm in his direction. "Hush for a minute. I want to hear what it is."

"What what is?" Spider looked around, perplexed. "What?" he repeated louder. "Tell me."

"You heard her—quiet!" roared Harold.

Rosemary rushed across the room to tune in the station more clearly before it was lost, only to lose it completely in the moment of truth. Guilt glazed her voice. "Sorry, sweetheart," she said as a restaurant commercial replaced the announcer's voice.

While the duck, noodles, and applesauce are being passed, let us speak of the seating arrangements. For as long as they've lived in this apartment, each Streeter has occupied the same place at table every night and twice on weekends, a place known as "his" or "hers." Harold, whose impressive height sometimes yields half an inch to a trick back that occasionally and unpredictably goes into spasms, occupies the single large orthopedic chair. Periodically Rosemary points out that it is merely this chair, and not outmoded paternal prerogatives, that makes Harold's position appear to be the head of the table, for the table is actually round, with neither head nor foot; but like so many theories, this one is impossible to put to the test. Rosemary sits opposite him in the very spot she commandeered for herself for its proximity to the kitchen when they first moved into the spacious apartment after Harold hit his jackpot a decade before. Though everyone in this modern family participates in getting the dinner on and off, and Harold is responsible for drinks, salads, and certain specialty dishes, it is Rosemary's taste and will, like the sturdy multicolored striped place mats of Mexican cotton, that set the tone at table. Facing the window to her right sits Daisy, dreamily looking out, and to her left, Spider, who sits on the edge of the plastic-coated chair he graduated to from his high chair at the age of three, perpetually tapping his foot against the leg to the perpetual annoyance of his father. (Very soon Spider will be taller than all of them, yet, as youngest, he'll continue to occupy the plastic-coated chair as long as he eats at this table or until a new generation replaces him.)

Had anyone objected to the seating arrangements, or had anyone requested a change, the four would doubtless have arrived at a compromise (as, when guests were present at table, the family put into operation the seating plan they had once in conference hammered out, involving the individual host's seat going to the guest), but no objection ever arose.

Similarly, a tacit agreement reserved for each Streeter a particular cup, color, spoon, part of the chicken or turkey, favorite sweet, bookshelf, turn (at the piano, VCR, telephone), room, role, passion, vice. Now, under the family's vigilant covetous gaze, Rosemary dishes up the initial portions of duck with everyone's favorite piece (except for Daisy, now an ostentatious vegetarian, who gets the heel of the bread instead); she portions out salad to those who hate dressing or dislike onion before pouring dressing over the remaining vegetables and tossing.

When the serving and passing came to an end, a silence, like a collective memory of grace, hovered over the table. Even Spider's tapping ceased. In that instant Harold felt gratitude. He looked at the rosy faces of his children, who had already passed him by and whom he knew he would never truly understand; at the plates laden with delectable food; at the table crowded with trivets and serving bowls that had come into being hardly more recently than the children who had formed them with their own hands; at the parting lips of his wife (in the silence he thought of her still as wife though Rosemary sometimes balked at the word), and he felt amazement that somehow, through all the crises and years, he had managed to hold together what everywhere else divorce was tearing apart.

"... So then she locked herself in the bathroom and exscaped out the window, just like Aunt Jessica said," said Spider.

"As Aunt Jessica said," corrected Daisy.

Rosemary put down her fork. "Is that true?"

"Come on, Mom," said Daisy. "You know it's as."

"No, I mean did Jessica really say she escaped?"

"Exscaped," said Daisy. "Spider said she said she exscaped."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Mom," sputtered Spider, "you should know. You're the one who told me the story in the first place."

"Watch your language, sonny," said Harold.

"But actually," continued Daisy, "that's kind of clever. Exscape is better than escape if you're going out the window."

That Harold felt excluded from the ornate tapestry his family wove before him at the dinner table made him love them no less; if anything, it made him appreciate them more. It was as if they had taken root in a lush garden he was grateful to be able to peek at through a gate. How different were these dinners from those of Harold's youth at which his own father, seated at the head of the table, answered his children's why's with because-I-say-so's and reported on office events to his wife, who fed him questions and courses from the foot, while Harold and his brother in collusive silence kicked one another under the table. This was a different world, and he was a stranger in it. Daisy had been a quiet, reflective child with large brown eyes that looked at him with adoration tinged with fear. Then suddenly one morning he had seen a beautiful busty woman doing yoga on the living room rug in panties and bra. It was Daisy. He still hadn't figured out how it had happened, but he no longer had to be reminded by his wife to knock before entering Daisy's room. Spider, for all the height he had gained over the summer, was still a boy, his boy, no man yet. But even Spider seemed shrouded in mystery as he tunneled deeper and deeper toward maturity. Soon he would grow a beard and escape.

"Daddy! You're not even listening," said Daisy, exasperated.

"What?"

"She asked you how come the outside of the glass gets wet too," repeated Rosemary wearily. She supposed she could learn chemistry too, as she had learned the elements of electricity and the rudiments of mechanics, but like so many of her fellow mathematicians who disdain the material world having glimpsed the ideal, she would prefer not to.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from In Every Woman's Life ... by Alix Kates Shulman. Copyright © 1987 Alix Kates Shulman. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Contents

At Home,
Outside,
Confessions,
Beached,
Anatomy Lessons,
Discoveries,
Tripping,
Trouble,
Next,
Acknowledgments,