The Stepford Wives

"That's why I was looking," he said. "They just finished eating."

"What are you going to talk with him about?"

They went out onto the patio.

"I was going to tell you," he said as they walked. "I've changed my mind; I'm joining that Men's Association."

She stopped and looked at him.

"Too many important things are centered there to just opt out of it," he said. "Local politicking, the charity drives and so on…"

She said, "How can you join an outdated, oldfashioned-2'

"I spoke to some of the men on the train," he said. "Ted, and Vic Stavros, and a few others they introduced me to. They agree that the no-women-allowed business is archaic."

He took her arm and they walked on. "But the only way to change it is from inside," he said. "So I'm going to help do it. I'm joining Saturday night.

Ted's going to brief me on who's on what committees." He offered her his cigarettes. "Are you smoking or non- tonight?"

"Oh-smoking," she said, reaching for one.

They stood at the patio's far edge, in cool blue dusk twanging with crickets, and Walter held his lighter flame to Joa

"Look at that sky," he said. "Worth every pe

"But it's easier from the inside," Walter said. "You'll see: if these men I spoke to are typical, it'll be the Everybody's Association before you know it. Coed poker. Sex on the pool table."

"If these men you spoke to were typical," she said, "it would be the Everybody's Association already. Oh, all right, go ahead and join; I'll think up slogans for placards. I'll have plenty of time when school starts."

He put his arm around her shoulders and said, "Hold off a little while. If it's not open to women in six months, I'll quit and we'll march together.

Shoulder to shoulder. 'Sex, yes; sexism, no."'

"'Stepford is out of step,"' she said, reaching for the ashtray on the picnic table.

"Not bad."

"Wait till I really get going."

They finished their cigarettes and stood arm in arm, looking at their dark wide runway of lawn, and the tall trees, black against mauve sky, that ended it. Lights shone among the trunks of the trees: windows of houses on the next street over, Harvest Lane.

"Robert Ardrey is right," Joa

Walter looked around at the Van Sant house and then squinted at his watch.

"I'm going to go in and wash up," he said, and kissed her cheek.

She turned and took his chin and kissed his lips. "I'm going to stay out a few minutes," she said. "Yell if they're acting up."

"Okay," he said. He went into the house by the living. room door.

She held her arms and rubbed them; the evening was growing cooler. Closing her eyes, she threw her head back and breathed the smell of grass and trees and clean air: delicious. She opened her eyes, to a single speck of star in dark blue sky, a trillion miles above her. "Star light, star bright," she said. She didn't say the rest of it, but she thought it.

She wished-that they would be happy in Stepford. That Pete and Kim would do well in school, and that she and Walter would find good friends and fulfillment. That he wouldn't mind the commuting-though the whole idea of moving had been his in the first place. That the lives of all four of them would be enriched, rather than diminished, as she had feared, by leaving the city-the filthy, crowded, crime-ridden, but so-alive city.

Sound and movement turned her toward the Van Sant house.

Carol Van Sant, a dark silhouette against the radiance of her kitchen doorway, was pressing the lid down onto a garbage can. She bent to the ground, red hair glinting, and came up with something large and round, a stone; she put it on top of the lid.

"Hi!" Joa

Carol straightened and stood facing her, tall and leggy and naked-seeming-but edged by the purple of a lightedfrom-behind dress.

"Who's there?" she called.

"Joa

She went toward the fence that divided her and Walter's property from the Van Sants'.

"Hi, Joa

"Yes," Joa

"Kim's a sweet little girl," Carol said. "I'm glad Allison has such a nice new friend next door. Good night, Joa

"Hey, wait a minute!" Joa

Carol turned back. "Yes?" she said.

Joa

What was so top-priority-urgent in that fluorescent-lighted copper-pothanging kitchen? "Walter's coming over to talk with Ted," she said, speaking loud to Carol's naked-seeming silhouette. "When you've got the kids down, why don't you come over and have a cup of coffee with me?"

"Thanks, I'd like to," Carol said, "but I have to wax the family-room floor."

"Tonight?"

"Night is the only time to do it, until school starts."

"Well can't it wait? It's only three more days."

Carol shook her head. "No, I've put it off too long as it is," she said.

"It's all over scuff-marks. And besides, Ted will be going to the Men's Association later on."

"Does he go every night?"

"Just about."

Dear God! "And you stay home and do housework?"

"There's always something or other that has to be done," Carol said. "You know how it is. I have to finish the kitchen now. Good night."

"Good night," Joa

Joa

Not to be like that, a compulsive hausfrau. Who could blame Ted for taking advantage of such an asking-to-be-exploited patsy?

She could blame him, that's who.

Walter came out of the house in a light jacket. "I don't think I'll be i-nore than an hour or so," he said.

"That Carol Van Sant is not to be believed," she said. "She can't come over for a cup of coffee because she has to wax the farnily-room floor.

Ted goes to the Men's Association every night and she stays home doing housework."

"Jesus," Walter said, shaking his head.

"Next to her," she said, "my mother is Kate Millett."

He laughed. "See you later," he said, and kissed her cheek and went away across the patio.

She took another look at her star, brighter now-Get to work, you, she thought to it-and went into the house.

THE FOUR OF THEM WENT OUT together Saturday morning, seatbelted into their spotless new station wagon; Joa