Hot Flashes Read online

  We are a generation of Type-A females—grown-up DEBs who disregarded all risks and used birth-control pills, cigarettes, Valium, Percodan and alcohol all at the same time. We also liked Dexedrine. Ah, diet pills. We were never slim enough. We wanted there to be a space-to-see-through between our thighs when we stood on sandy beaches. There seldom was and our weight fluctuations haunted us from decade to decade. We lost and gained the same ten pounds year after year and only pretended to prefer wearing loose long shirts outside our jeans instead of tucked in with a narrow belt.

  We are not, like the flappers, a happy-go-lucky crowd. Many of us can be identified by the permanent silver bracelets we wear around our wrists, pale raised scars of unsuccessful suicide attempts. Lots of us have had our heads shrunk and some of us have already had our hearts, minds, and faces lifted in a variety of ways. In self-defense, we tried to stave off bitterness with black humor, and because we were funny we were upgraded to hostesses’ “A” lists so that we could flash our wit at their drunken dinner parties.

  We have read and written lots of books about women like us and the way we live now. Most of our favorite writers turn out to have been feminists. We loved Colette, but we also admired her husband, who kept her locked up each day until she wrote a certain number of pages. We were early fans of Virginia Woolf and also of her suicide—the way she walked into the river, just like that. Boom. We like novels such as My Old Sweetheart, Play It As It Lays, Speedboat and Sleepless Nights. Our biggest turn-on books are Fanny Hill, Forever Amber and Lolita.

  “We don’t need husbands, “Joanne once said.” What we need are editors.” We also could have used road managers, salad chefs, certified accountants, fashion consultants, pit-stop auto mechanics, research interns, stenographers, and various other support staff. It was Joanne who said that the only “staff” she ever had was the infectious kind. What we all needed was a wife; we just weren’t liberated enough to realize it.

  Since most of the books we enjoyed were about women like us, many of us began writing fiction. We found this career quite suitable, since writing didn’t require attendance at an office and could be conducted off-season during off-hours in an offhand, off-the-record sort of way. At the very least, writing could be used as an answer when someone asked, “And what do you do?” (“About what?” Alice used to reply before becoming an author.)

  Unfortunately, narratives are difficult for us because our escapades, though often extravagantly dramatic, are essentially episodic. Since art is supposed to re-create reality, and because our lives don’t seem to have much structure, many of our books are a little skimpy in the plot department. Sukie’s novels seldom had any neat progression of events that concluded in an appropriate crisis followed by denouement. The only thing Sukie built—besides suspense—was some psychological scaffolding for her heroine to scale.

  Superior women such as ourselves want our novels to be better than those contrived, superpower spy thrillers that invariably become best-sellers. Actually, we just want to know about each other’s lives right now and how everyone’s doing at the moment. Since we seldom write letters, many of us publish novels or magazine articles about our current circumstances as a way of keeping in touch.

  Unfortunately, at the present time, most of our spiritual lives are stagnant. Although some of us practice liberation theology, and Jennifer is a leader in the Sanctuary movement, too often we use our religions only as metaphors in our fiction rather than rituals in our lives. Judaism has become a joke, Catholicism a crutch, the Anglican church a conceit, and evangelical sects a required component in any so-called Southern or black novels we produce.

  Politically, many of us were members of the New Left, which means we are now the Old New Left. Each of us can remember what she was doing on the day the Rosenbergs were executed. Indeed, Sylvia began The Bell Jar with a sentence dating her summer in New York from their execution. That was a starting point for a lot of us. We believe in nationalist revolutions, in the impeding of imperial powers, and in the integrity of the individual. That’s it. Period. End of political report.

  We were such good friends. Really. We still are.

  We gathered for the funerals of our loved ones, as well as for weddings, divorces, separations, births, miscarriages, graduations, breakdowns, hysterectomies and publishing parties. We came early and stayed late to help each other. We loved to stay up all night, drinking wine and smoking dope or cigarettes, while telling each other the same old poor-little-rich-girl stories about ourselves that we liked to share. We are instantaneous, unnamed and unindicted co-conspirators in each other’s battles against husbands or ex-husbands, lovers or ex-lovers, in-laws or outlaws, and unreasonable offspring. Like perennial high school juniors, we continue to discuss what we’re going to be.

  Actually, what we’re all going to be is at least fifty by the end of the eighties.

  A lot of us have permanent Pap smear appointments scheduled each year on our birthdays so we won’t forget. We discuss biopsies, bonding, and bifocals with growing frequency. Since half of us get hot flashes already, we discuss what to do about them. The JAPs among us simply turn off the heat in their homes when they are having heavy hot flash activity during the winter. Our California contingent takes drops of a potion composed of flower extracts—hornbeam, mimulus, agrimony and cherry plum—four times a day. Our Eastern division uses estrogen, but arranges for breakthrough bleeding to avoid cancer. We all laugh at the notion that menopause implies “Men: a Pause.”

  Most of us are ecstatic about dispensing with birth-control pills, sponges, coils, diaphragms and nonrecreational condoms. We are thrilled about not having to buy any more tampons, sanitary pads, belts, shields, quilted mattress covers, Clorox bleach, calendars or Midol. We are delighted that we can finally throw away all our once-white panties bearing pale but indelible borscht-pink stains and buy fresh new ones that will never get soiled or spoiled. Needless to say, we are relieved that never again will we accidentally pull a Tampax—instead of a pen—out of our purses while scrambling to write a check or suffer a flash-flood while sitting on someone else’s white sofa.

  Although our nests have been depopulated, they are not completely empty. Currently, because of economic shortfalls, many of the yuppies we spawned have returned home to live with us. Avidly interested in acquiring a second VCR so they can pirate old movies, they do not hesitate to ask us for money to help them accomplish this high-minded goal. Although some of them are married, most of them remain in heat and are busy exchanging old SAT scores for LSATs or MCATs. Our daughters worry about their eggs getting stale while they become lawyers and astronauts. Our sons are busy acquiring MBAs, BMWs and IBM-PCs. They read spread sheets or flow charts, discuss condos or condums, quote Dow Jones averages, do coke instead of drink it, and like bright lights and big cities.

  We are not yet ready to die. First off, we still have the kids’ old dogs growing incontinent on our worn-out carpeting and nowadays we have to spend a lot of time coaxing them to eat. Also, we still haven’t finished the ironing. We could never finish the ironing and there will surely be four thrice-dampened cotton shirts still waiting in their yellow plastic laundry basket when we finally throw in the towel.

  Since we are not the sort to go gently into that good night, when we do succumb we want to be at home on our own comfy sofas. Long accustomed to bequeathing old party dresses to our cleaning ladies, at the last moment we will probably donate a selection of our used organs to some nearby hospital. One thing is perfectly clear. We have all decided upon closed-coffin funerals. If for some reason the coffins must be open, we want to be buried with our sunglasses on.

  When the shuttle finally gets its landing clearance, I tuck my “Hot Flashes” notebook back into my purse and begin preparing myself for all that is about to happen.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sukie Amram died on the Friday morning of Labor Day weekend. She had been attending a special Senate floor debate when she collapsed in her seat in the Press Gallery around t
en-thirty. The Capitol police called their rescue squad, but the medics said Sukie was dead before they arrived. She had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Outside in the corridor, Mary Murphy, Newsweek’s Capitol Hill correspondent, took charge and arranged to have Sukie’s body transferred to Brownell’s Funeral Home. Then she stuffed Sukie’s purse in her briefcase, slipped out of the Capitol Building, and took a taxi to Sukie’s house in Cleveland Park. There she rang the bell several times before admitting herself with one of the keys she found in Sukie’s purse.

  Although she knew Sukie was divorced, Mary Murphy first telephoned Max Amram’s office. Max’s secretary answered and said that Mr. Amram was in Europe. When Mary explained about Sukie, the secretary became highly agitated and said that the two Amram children were also in Portugal with their father. She then volunteered to contact the American embassy in Lisbon for help in locating them.

  Next, Mary began flipping through Sukie’s annotated Rolodex. One of her first calls was to Joanne Ireland, in New York City, who then telephoned Elaine Cantor, across town on the East Side, who then called me out on Long Island where I was spending the last weeks of August with my daughters. Elaine and Joanne were going to take the three o’clock shuttle down to Washington, where Mary Murphy was waiting for them. I said I would meet them at Sukie’s house as soon as I could.

  Because I couldn’t get a flight out of Islip, I had to drive all the way back to LaGuardia. On the Friday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, the traffic, though mostly eastbound, was harrowing and the heat oppressive. The trip seemed endless as my shock shifted into grief and then gradually into panic. By the time I reached the airport at five-thirty, I felt fairly unhinged.

  That doesn’t happen very often anymore. Now that Leonard and I have been divorced for three years, my life is fairly disciplined. Indeed, I have largely banished wasteful emotionalism from my existence so that I function in a rational rather than a reactive mode. With considerable concentration, I have finally developed a control system for tuning out disturbing distractions and turning off disruptive relationships. Gradually I’ve taught myself to experience solitude as freedom and aloneness as wholeness. Mine is a distinctly 1980s philosophy.

  I have a number of collegial friendships, plus one romantic interest—a man whose presence and absence are equally pleasurable to me. My two daughters are both happily ensconced at Yale. Loren is a junior in the English department and Lisa is a sophomore. I teach two courses at Columbia and devote the remainder of my time to research and writing. A year ago, I published a piece on “Adult American Depression Babies” in The New York Times Magazine, which catapulted me into my fifteen minutes of national fame. I did the “Today” show, as well as some local TV appearances, and last month Vogue ran a flattering photo of me in a story about “sleek, chic” academic women “making waves.” My daughters tease me that next I’ll be doing American Express commercials.

  The flight to National doesn’t land until 8:50. Outside the terminal, Washington is in the grip of its annual heat wave. Summers in Washington rarely progress or peak, so they can never climax and dissipate themselves. Instead, the humidity holds the city hostage well into September. The atmosphere swells like a pregnant woman past term, and the temperature rises until the heat lies like an overweight body atop the city.

  The taxi I find is not air-conditioned, so when I finally reach Sukie’s house, at a quarter to ten, I am drenched in sweat.

  Elaine Cantor opens the door and I immediately fall into her arms. We cling together, sobbing and swaying in rhythm with our grief.

  Elaine is fifty, short, round, dimpled, and originally both blond and cheerful. Born on the Lower East Side, but bred for the Upper, Elaine integrated her aggressive liberal politics and University of Chicago training to become a substitute English teacher in the Manhattan public school system in 1960. Since she was the most fervent radical of us all, she served as our political conscience and coach. Two years ago, after the breakup of her twenty-four-year marriage, Elaine quit working, let herself go, and gained thirty pounds. She told Joanne that she had stopped brushing her teeth before going to bed and that flossing was far beyond her at the present time.

  Elaine’s husband, Nathaniel, a rich corporate lawyer, gave her one of two houses he owned in the Hamptons and their East Side apartment. He then married a young TV producer and fathered a baby daughter. Elaine’s two married sons come for Friday-night dinner with their wives and children every week. Recently Elaine threw the small plastic Weight Watchers food scale she’d bought for $12.50 into the garbage pail and replaced it with her Cuisinart food processor which she had previously considered too unsightly to leave out on the counter full-time. Now all the lemons and limes in her refrigerator have raw spots on their rinds where she’s grated them to meet some recipe requirement.

  When I hear footsteps behind us on the hall staircase, my heart begins to pound, but when I turn around it is not Sukie rushing toward me, but Joanne Ireland—sobbing and stumbling forward. As if changing partners for a slow dance, I turn to embrace her while Sukie’s poodle, Happy, runs around in circles, barking shrilly at our performance. When we finally regain some composure, the three of us go into the living room, where Sukie kept her strongest window air-conditioning unit.

  Unlike Elaine, Joanne Ireland watches her weight as intensely as she watches “General Hospital”—her one and only daytime soap. Joanne is a flashy career woman of forty-three. From an unhappy, dingy-lace-curtain family in Boston, she pulled herself together and, using Gloria as her role model, graduated from BU and moved to New York to become a writer. Tall, slim, and seductive, Joanne keeps her mane of thick, wheat-colored hair streaked with creamy blond flashes. Never married, she maintains an attractive, designer-decorated, all-white apartment on Central Park West by writing fast, breezy articles for Vogue, Esquire, Playboy and Vanity Fair.

  Far and away the most glamorous of our group, Joanne is perhaps the least contented. Bitter about not having children, she recently began contemplating celibacy (“Everybody’s not doing it,” she told me last winter) as a skewed act of revenge against her many male admirers. While considering chastity, however, she remains sexually active, aerobically trim, borderline trendy, and emotionally unfulfilled.

  Elaine has set up a branch mini-bar on the fireplace mantel, where she mixes me a gin and tonic. Sukie’s long, narrow living room is furnished with dark, cumbersome Victorian pieces, plus a few tired upholstered chairs. The centerpiece is a cozy floral sofa where Sukie always curled up to “schmooze.” On the walls hang her favorite Impressionist prints, still wearing the same frames they acquired when Sukie was in college. We are all old enough now to appreciate Impressionism once again. This reversal occurred about the same time we rediscovered our affection for African violets.

  Sitting in the living room without Sukie makes me feel like an intruder. This time she has not invited any of us to come stay at her house. This time there are no salted almonds in the tarnished silver nut dish she kept on the end table beside the sofa. This time there are no plans to meet friends for lunch or a visit to the East Wing of the National Gallery the next day. This time is like none of the many times before.

  During the sixties and early seventies—our most politically heady and personally happy years—we always crashed at Sukie’s house when we came to Washington for antiwar demonstrations or civil rights marches. First we stayed there with our young husbands and babies, and then, later on as the war intensified, with our growing-up families. Since our political experiences are inextricably entangled with our shared memories of being young together, during the shiva / wake we hold for Sukie, we grieve for the past as well as for her—as if the past, too, were a fallen friend.

  Because Sukie and Max had been active in the antiwar movement, they always knew where the marchers were to congregate, how to avoid arrest and where to go after the demonstration. Most often it was to the Amrams’. Many of the peace movement leaders stayed at their house, which seemed infinitely
inflatable when space was needed. The Amrams had bought—for a song—and renovated a Victorian mansion in 1961, just before the Kennedy people arrived to acquire every interesting piece of real estate inside the city limits.

  Sukie’s house was casual and cozy in the winter, easy and convenient in the summer. On demonstration weekends, her living room would be carpeted in wall-to-wall sleeping bags until she mobilized the children to reroll and stuff them in the corners, where they slumped like unmarked body bags. Following summer demonstrations, we would return to Sukie’s house, sunburned and exhausted, to argue about our estimates of the crowd size as opposed to “official counts,” and to discuss the quality of speeches delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In the winter, sometimes with frostbitten feet or fingers, we made our way back to warm ourselves in front of her large living room fireplace. At night there was always lots of Acapulco Gold, donated by Max’s West Coast friends, and we would stay awake—long after our husbands and kids had gone to sleep—smoking and exuberantly exchanging confidences in Sukie’s kitchen.

  I knew the Amrams because Max and I had been students at Harvard together in the mid-fifties. Although I declared my major in anthropology early on, Max took a more circuitous route before entering the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, where he completed his doctorate in social psychology. Eventually he accepted a position at American University and became chairman of the sociology department there.

  The friendship between Max and me had always wavered between keen intellectual respect and dangerous sexual attraction. Max was undeniably handsome, brilliant and charming, but at Radcliffe I had begun to attain some distinctions of my own—so neither one of us wanted to risk pursuing the other. It was a standoff. Truthfully, I always feared Max was too much for me because back in the mid-fifties, nice girls had to gift-wrap affairs in a patina of potential permanence. Hardly the marrying kind, Max refused to pretend we might be serious, so I avoided sleeping with him.