The Book of Eve by Constance Beresford-Howe

Author:Constance Beresford-Howe [Beresford-Howe, Constance]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-704-9
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2001-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

Yes, Harry’s undeveloped attraction was the beginning, really, of what ended for me in my fifties, when, to my consternation, a few stiff grey hairs appeared on my chin, and men looked at, but no longer saw, me. Never did get quite used to that — being neutered is pretty dreary. Something so basic about being desired; much simpler and easier than being loved, and maybe more necessary to a woman’s mental health. I pondered the whole business a lot on my finding expeditions early in the bleached February mornings.

Not that having the sexual charge was all that idyllic at the time. Led, in fact, to all sorts of the most awkward embarrassments and impasses. Furthermore, there were times in my life when nobody, absolutely nobody, found me attractive. Through most of my girlhood I was so tight with egotism and intelligence that I might have been bodiless as far as boys could tell. You can’t count sad freaks like the blouse-feeler, of course; the really poignant fact is, I wasn’t kissed till I was eighteen, and then it was only by a theology student with damp hands like a frog. For ages only the most wildly unsuitable people pursued me — psychologically retarded men of all ages with nothing in common but their unattractiveness. That neurotic boy at Macdonald, for instance, in the Philosophy of Education course: at twenty he’d already had two nervous breakdowns because he felt guilty about hating his mother. Or the janitor at the slum school who used to eye me boldly and one day sidled up and tried to feel my bottom. Or, perhaps the best of the collection, the canon of seventy who used to visit Dad with sherry and religious consolation, and tickled my palm with his dry, warm, wicked old finger. Men like these often plunged me into dark brooding in those days. May, for instance, was always being courted by attractive, normal kinds of males. It wasn’t fair. I had a skin like porcelain and lots of glossy, golden-brown hair, well-shaped if rather ample hips; why was it only the pimply ones, compulsive coughers, vegetarians, and communists who asked me for dates?

Still, they did ask. And the interlude with Pat, for all its dire pangs, did happen. So did life with Burt, even if they both confirmed my suspicion that sex was a detail I had better learn to consider trivial. (May, in the meantime, had moved to New York, and was going comfortably to bed twice a week with a book salesman who had a wife in Albany. That lasted twenty serene years, while Burt and I snarled and snapped in a marriage that had turned into a cage.)

An umbrella — charming orange, yellow, and green flowers in silk, and only one broken spoke. Looks like spring. Take it along.

No doubt about it, though: dealing in general with the male population — customs men, doctors, electricians, taxi-drivers — a woman gets used to a certain kind of attention. When that stops, you feel surprised and a bit depressed.

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