Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [47]
"Before what?" Beans asked. "And after what?"
"Before and after intercourse."
"Oh."
"They have intercourse much, much more often than American women do. Or English women for that matter."
"Why?" Daisy asked. "Why do they?"
"They’re much more highly sexed. They think sex is a very important part of being a woman. They’re very keen on it, very creative."
"What do you mean, creative?"
"They do it other ways."
"What?"
"Other ways than the normal ways, I mean. Last summer, at one of the hotels where we were staying—in this little bureau drawer—I found a book, a kind of pamphlet. With pictures. Of couples, you know, making love. In different ways."
"You never told us this before."
"You never asked."
"What exactly were they doing?"
"Who?"
"The couple, in the pictures?"
"Yes, what?"
"Well." Fraidy looks down at her fresh nail polish. "From the pictures in this little book, it looked as though"—she pauses—"as though they were kissing each other. Down there."
"Where?"
"Here." Pointing at her lap.
"Oh, my God."
"You mean men kissing women down there or women kissing men?"
"Both."
"Oh, my God."
"I couldn’t."
"I’d be sick to my stomach, I’d throw up."
"I feel sick right this minute, just thinking about it."
"For them it’s perfectly natural. They’re not half as puritanical as we are in America. They’re used to it. And, of course, it’s one way to, you know. To make sure you don’t get pregnant."
"I hope Dick doesn’t know anything about that kind of thing," Beans says. She will be marrying Dick Greene on the first Saturday in July.
"My goodness, you don’t think Harold would ever try—" Daisy looks at Fraidy and then at Beans. There is a moment of solid conspiratorial silence, and then the three of them burst out laughing.
Not one of them understands the reason for this sudden hilarity; it’s just something that descends on them sometimes, like gusts of weather. "Stop making me laugh," Beans gasps, "or I’ll split my gee-dee seams open." "And I’m going to wet my gee-dee underpants," screams Fraidy.
They’re always laughing, these three, laughing to beat the band—as Fraidy’s mother puts it. Sometimes Daisy thinks that she and Fraidy and Beans are like one person sitting around in the same body, breathing in the same wafts of air and coming out with the same larky thoughts. This has been going on forever, all the years they were at Tudor Hall in Indianapolis, and then going off to Long College together, and pledging the same sorority and getting their diplomas on the same June morning. And whenever Daisy stops and thinks about her honeymoon, about actually standing in front of the Eiffel Tower or the Roman Coliseum, she always somehow imagines that Fraidy and Beans will be there too, standing right next to her and whooping and laughing and racketing around like crazy.
But this afternoon, with the electric fan blowing up her silk underskirt, she realizes that of course this isn’t true. She’ll be standing in those strange foreign places all alone. Just herself and her husband, Harold A. Hoad.
Harold A. Hoad’s middle initial, A, stands for Arthur, which was his father’s name, the same father who shot himself when Harold was seven years old in the cellar of his stone castle on East First Street.
This is the street where the important quarry owners live, a cool, straight, sane-looking street with overarching trees and the houses set well back. The Hoad house, which is situated across the street from the Kinsey house, was built in the English Domestic Revival style with a steeply pitched roof and tapering chimney.
The structure is solid stone, not merely dressed with ashlar facing. The windows are leaded glass. The massive front door is oak, and the delicate carving around