A Natural Woman

By Donald Bowie

It's 1985. Threatened by the spectre of mortal illness, beautiful Abigail Winslow suddenly forsakes her glittering world of high-priced antiques and New York, solely for a daring struggle with her past. Desperate, she plunges into a brief but passionate affair with a strikingly handsome young doctor, retraces the course of her troubled childhood, and searches for the one man she has never stopped loving.

But when Abigail returns to her life and to her career, she realizes that in one wild, frightened moment she had been offered everything she could ever desire…and emerges ready to live again, with a joy she had never dared imagine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Untreed Reads
• Release date: Aug 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781611877359

Book preview

Klinger.

1

THE NEWS WAS SUPERIMPOSED ON THE VIDEOTAPE, A LINE of white teletype that moved along the bottom of Abigail’s picture tube.

Now what? she wondered.

With comprehension came what felt like a blow to the center of her chest.

There has been an unconfirmed report that John Lennon has been shot.

Abigail sat stunned.

Twenty minutes later a special bulletin announced that John Lennon had indeed been shot. And killed.

Abigail’s telephone rang. It was her friend Cynthia. Cynthia was in tears.

"What’s the matter with people? she wailed. It never stops."

I don’t know, Abigail said. I just don’t know.

But in a few days she knew well enough why it had happened. The worst always wanted to see the best blown away; that was how some of the world’s failures got their satisfaction in life. Creating death.

*

On the memorial Sunday that Yoko Ono had asked for, Abigail and Cynthia stood together in Central Park, weeping softly. When it was over, Cynthia said, My grandmother used to say she felt as old as the hills. Now I know what she meant.

Over six years after that silent vigil in the park, Abigail had a strange dream. She dreamed that she was in Central Park. She did not know what was going on, but she saw a crowd and, out of curiosity, walked over to it. She asked a stranger what was happening. He told her that John Lennon was dead.

In her dream, Abigail was crushed by the news. Slumping onto a park bench, she put her head in her hands and sobbed. She felt as though the tears were coming through the pores in her skin; she felt as if her soul had burst. But it was an agony that was almost sweet, because it was, somehow, a release.

Abigail woke up completely dry-eyed.

She thought of her father, then.

Abigail’s father liked to scoff at what he called a woman’s tears. He thought they were some sort of female weapon—and about as potent as a little boy’s capgun. Abigail had thought, when she was growing up in the early sixties, that fathers could still say things like that with confidence. Now they simply walked away from the tears, and saw the kids on weekends.

Lying there alone in bed, Abigail wondered what her father would have said if he’d ever discovered that a woman’s tears can be erotic. And she wondered why she had cried in her sleep for John Lennon, only to awaken dry-eyed and in a cold sweat that, had it been warm, would have felt like desire.

It was a quarter to six. Sunday morning. Saturday night had ended early, at twelve-thirty. Abigail had seen an off-Broadway show with Joe Epstein, a television producer who had been pursuing her patiently ever since his wife and he had split up. He was a nice enough guy, but he wasn’t an inevitability in Abigail’s life, although his patience probably came from the feeling that he was. Why did every eligible man in New York think that all roads led to him? Or at least to dinner with him in an Italian restaurant.

Joe wasn’t putting any pressure on her, but Abigail knew that sooner or later she would have to sleep with him, or he would move on to the next one. Good conversation counted, but not for everything.

After the show they had admitted to each other that they were both tired and wanted to call it an evening. Making such open admissions was one of the signs of a mature relationship—or of one rapidly becoming just friendship.

Was it that Joe and she had not connected, somehow? Or was it that some need in her for a fullness of passion had been denied once again? Abigail was not sure. But the dream had called up her father’s image, and that was never a good sign. If anything, it was an alarm going off in her head, a signal to her that instead of tossing and turning for another three or four hours, she should get up and do something positive. Polish the silver, or do the windows.

Housework could be a godsend, sometimes; in the act of doing it, you threw all kinds of junk out of your head.

Resolutely pushing back the blanket, Abigail got out of bed and went into her bathroom. She saw in her mirror that there was the faintest gray cast to the skin under her eyes; but she knew it would be gone by nine or ten, when she’d shed all of the night.

Abigail’s long blond hair had gone to grass on the pillow; she combed it out straight. When Abigail’s hair was behaving, it would sometimes fan out in the breeze like a swimmer’s hair underwater. At moments like that, she felt it looked pretty good, although not like a Breck ad or anything. But there were those, among them many men, who thought her hair did look like a model’s. Abigail’s features, and the shape of her body, were like the coolly exact line drawing of fashion illustrations. Her eyes were so light a shade of blue that they attracted other, duller eyes, almost hypnotically. They were large for her face, which was shaped like an elegant wineglass, smoothly convex, the high cheekbones at the rim.

This morning, Abigail felt the weight of her eyelids; she felt old. But she didn’t look old. She looked, in fact, younger than her thirty-four years. She had always looked younger than she was because she was small-boned and tightly knit. Her body had that supple elasticity often associated with the French, as if it were somehow attuned to sensuality, like a stringed instrument capable of playing languid jazz.

Abigail stretched and turned on the water faucet. As she washed, she decided that this was as good a time as any to tackle the living room. Tackle was the word Abigail’s mother always used when she was up against a big job of housecleaning, and her daughter thought of such tasks in exactly the same way. It was one of those domestic attitudes that women unconsciously hand down from generation to generation, something that eventually becomes an unshakable habit of mind, almost an imprint on the genes. The Winslow women tackled their housecleaning. That’s all there was to it. Hunched over in their housecoats like football players, they put their shoulders into the work.

After she’d had two cups of coffee and a fried egg, Abigail was ready to roll up her sleeves. No cleaning job her mother ever had to face could equal shoveling off the soot that caked Abigail’s window sills, or washing windows that had to be gone over twice and three times before the gray film would admit any daylight. There was only one way to deal with it all: you had to get up early in the morning. That was how you got the best of New York. It was an old New England maxim that you had to get up pretty early in the morning to fool some people, and Abigail had found that this was true of the city’s dust as well as its population. If you went to work on a dirty apartment early enough on a Sunday morning, it lost the advantage of having the Sunday Times scattered around. That little edge could make all the difference.

Some rule in the bylaws of Abigail’s co-op said that residents weren’t supposed to stand on the ledges to wash their windows, or to lean outside either, lest air conditioners and window boxes rain down on the sidewalk below, with liability right around the corner. Abigail was able to circumvent this rule by lowering one window and raising another and then reaching in between, where her hand would just barely fit. At nine-thirty, she was standing on a step stool with her arm wedged in the window, like a neck prepared for the guillotine, when the telephone rang.

It was her friend, Cynthia. Cynthia was nearly hysterical.

I’ve been up since seven-thirty, she wailed. "I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and started cleaning like you say you always do, and I was trying to clean out my kitchen cabinets, and these three Roach Motels that I just put in last week are all full. And they’re alive in there. I don’t dare touch them. I’m afraid they’ll all fall out."

You didn’t tell me you had roaches, Abigail said.

I was ashamed, Cynthia replied. "I’m responsible for my own crumbs, aren’t I? Oh, God, one was even in the bathtub last night. What am I going to do, Abs?"

Just sit down and wait for me, Abigail said. I’ll be over in about twenty minutes.

I’m sorry to call you up this early on Sunday, Abs, but…

Don’t worry about it, Cyndi, I’ve been up for hours. As a matter of fact, I’ve been doing some cleaning myself. I’m not going to bother to change or anything. I’ll just put on my coat and hop right into a cab. You just sit tight.

Oh, Abby, you’re a lifesaver.

Abigail hung up and tied her housecoat around her. Then she took off her dustcap and stuffed it in a pocket. Removing her old terrycloth slippers in her bedroom, she put on a pair of Red Cross shoes that were reserved for things like bargain hunting on the Lower East Side. Next she pulled on an old London Fog that was big enough to cover her housecoat. Finding what she wanted under the kitchen sink, she went out into the winter chill looking like an English nannie with a purpose.

When she arrived at Cynthia’s apartment, Abigail found her friend cowering by the door with a can of Raid in her hand.

Abby, thank God you’re here, she said. Oh, it’s just awful. Their feet are stuck and they keep bobbing up and down, doing these ghastly little deep knee bends just like one of the old people at my health club.

Okay, first, where are the traps? Abigail asked. She took off her heavy raincoat and slung it over one of Cynthia’s chairs.

Two are in the cabinet over the sink and one’s in the cabinet over the refrigerator, Cynthia replied. Hey, you’re wearing a housecoat.

Of course, Abigail said as she put on her dustcap. And I still have my nightgown on underneath. When I’m through cleaning, the whole business goes into the wash. This is how I always clean house. It’s the way my mother always cleans house. I know I look funny, but then so does Superman when he comes out of a phone booth. Get me a garbage bag, will you?

Abigail was already on her way to the cabinets. Opening the one over the sink, she picked up a Roach Motel.

Eeeeh! Cynthia shrieked. Be careful. They might fall out.

Abigail looked inside.

Good grief, she said. You certainly do have all shapes and sizes in here. And these things never do get the stragglers. We’re going to have to go through all these cabinets. Why don’t you start taking things out?

She tossed the trap into the garbage bag that Cynthia was holding at arm’s length, and then she collected the other two.

Aren’t you afraid of them? Cynthia said.

I’m a lot bigger than they are, Abigail replied. Besides, I like indulging my female aggression. You know how it is, Cyn. Male aggression comes from the sex drive and female aggression comes from the need to defend the food supply.

I’m a weakling when it comes to food, Cynthia confessed. I feel watched by diet books.

Abigail picked up a paperback and slapped it down on a roach that was scuttling across the counter.

"Oh, my God, that was Eat to Win," Cynthia said.

All right, everything comes out of these cabinets, Abigail said. You take the stuff as I hand it to you.

Okay, but I’ll have to look the other way if any more of them run out, Cynthia said.

A tin of Norwegian sardines, Abigail remarked as she scattered goods. These must have come in one of those holiday gift boxes, didn’t they?

Naturally, Cynthia said.

When they opened up King Tut’s tomb I bet they found a tin of Norwegian sardines, Abigail said. ‘Way in the back of the kitchen cabinet that was supposed to serve him in the afterlife. Here, put this honey and corn syrup in the sink so we can rinse them off later.

My honey always dribbles over the side of the jar, Cynthia said. I guess everything in my kitchen cabinets is at the same stage of development I am.

Where the china was, Abigail came upon the nest of nests.

Here they are, she said. What a colony. Egg cases and everything.

Underneath my grandmother’s Rosenthal china, Cynthia moaned.

Abigail took a big sponge and brought the roof in on the roaches.

When the cabinets were all more or less sterile, she opened a jar that she’d brought with her and sprinkled a fine white powder along the edges of each shelf.

What’s that? Cynthia asked.

Boric acid powder, Abigail replied. It gets rid of them every time.

How? Cynthia said.

Roaches are basically clean, Abigail explained. They get into this stuff, and when they lick it off themselves, they die.

Funny, Cynthia said. That’s the one thing I learned in home economics class in high school—that too much hygiene is fatal. How can I thank you, Abs? For saving me from this plague of creepy crawly…

Abigail smacked the counter with Eat to Win again.

Gotcha, she said. A cup of coffee will be thanks enough, Cyn.

Coming up, Cynthia replied.

As the two women sat drinking their coffee, she said, Your cheeks are so rosy. But you’re not wearing any rouge, are you?

No, Abigail said. It could be I’m a little flushed from dealing with the army that was occupying your kitchen.

I still haven’t washed off all of what I put on my face last night, Cynthia said. Estée Lauder’s Night Repair. They call it a ‘cellular recovery complex.’ It’s supposed to undo at night what ultraviolet light does during the day.

I don’t know anything that can counteract ultraviolet light except a sunbonnet, Abigail said. And you can’t go around in one of those in the middle of December.

Maybe a veil helps, like you sometimes wear, Cynthia said.

I don’t know, Abigail replied. All I know is I wound up with Aunt Edith’s hats and Aunt Helen’s hats and even my mother’s cousin Alberta’s hats. It was either store them or wear them, so I wear them.

And people stop you in the street offering to buy them, Cynthia pointed out. You’ve always had such natural style. Me, I fall for every new outfit that Bloomingdale’s puts on the rack. Name any year off the top of your head—like 1971—and I can go into my closet and find you something that looked ridiculous in 1972. Where did you get that dustcap, Abs? It makes you look like the girl they used to have on the Dutch Cleanser cans.

It was Aunt Edith’s, Abigail said, sipping her coffee. I have five of them. If I ever lose my job I can put one on and be a tour guide in one of those historical houses that’s owned by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

I read how you need to get moisture in the outer layers of your skin, Cynthia said. She touched a cheek tentatively. So I bought this new moisturizer that they call ‘sub-skin creme.’

One moisturizer’s as good as another, Abigail said.

Do you still use Avon’s stuff? Cynthia asked.

Of course, Abigail replied. The real beauty of Avon’s beauty products is that a little of them goes a long way. If you use too much you wind up looking like a new car instead of a person. But I’ve always used the stuff and I guess I always will. It’s because of the woman who used to sell Avon products in my neighborhood when I was growing up. Did I ever tell you about her?

No, you didn’t, Cynthia said.

"Well, when I was a little girl, she used to go from door to door. On a bicycle. She wore a straw hat and long black dresses. She looked a little like Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz. And she had this wicker basket that she carried around her samples in. She may have been a witch. I don’t know. But she certainly put a spell on my mother and me. She’s never used anything but Avon products, and neither have I."

If I used Avon products and puffed my cheeks out a little I could pass for a Hummel figurine, Cynthia observed. But you, you can get away with anything. It’s those high cheekbones of yours.

Oh, I don’t know, Abigail said. We women spend too much time painting and plastering ourselves.

Plastering is the word for it all right, Cynthia said. Last week I bought a jar of this stuff called Nutribel. The ad said it ‘allows the skin to yield easily to facial expressions.’ I think what I really should use is plaster of Paris, so I can put a smile on my face and set it permanently, like Miss America.

"We shouldn’t think of our faces as rooms, all arranged, Abigail said. Decorated faces make me uncomfortable. They always have. They are like rooms, in a way. But you don’t really see into the interior. Except if you catch them with a certain look…in their eyes. The Avon lady with the bicycle had it. That’s how she enchanted me."

Do I ever have it? Cynthia asked.

Sometimes, Abigail said. Other times, you get a sort of faraway expression on your face…the kind of look that if you were Catholic, the nuns would ask you if you thought you might have a vocation.

A vocation? You mean becoming a nun. But I’m Jewish.

That doesn’t mean you don’t have a calling.

"What do you mean by a calling?"

A career. That you can dedicate your heart and soul to.

Oh. You mean Joel. That’s the calling of the wild. And he hasn’t called me all weekend. Let’s just change the subject, okay?

Okay. Do you want me to leave you that jar of boric acid powder?

I’ll pay you for it, Abs. How much did it cost?

Don’t be silly. It doesn’t cost anything.

Don’t they make a boric acid ointment?

Yes, they do, Abigail replied. But you want the powder for roaches.

I wonder if I could use boric acid ointment as a night cream, Cynthia said. She was tapping her fingernails on the table in a toccata of nerves.

Is this coffee we’re drinking or speed? Abigail asked.

Oh, you’re always pooh-poohing all my great inspirations, Cynthia said. But what can I expect from someone who goes to the beach and doesn’t use anything but baby oil and a block.

That’s more practical than bringing along an aloe plant.

How was I to know the tide would come in so fast? I grew another one, anyway.

Well, at any rate, I’ve got to go and get my hair cut this noon, Abigail said. So I really should go home and take a bath.

She put down her coffee cup and started to get up from the table.

You doing anything tonight? Cynthia asked.

No, I wasn’t planning to, Abigail replied.

Why don’t you call me later? Cynthia suggested. Maybe we’ll do something.

Okay, fine.

As she went out the door, Cynthia said to her, You know, you’re the only person I know who runs around the city in her nightgown.

No I’m not, Abigail said. This guy I know says there’s a woman in his mother’s building who goes into the park in her nightgown and picks up bundles of sticks.

Wouldn’t you know it? Cynthia replied. You get an apartment with a wood-burning fireplace—and then you lose it all, anyway.

That’s life in the big city, said Abigail. I’ll call you sometime after six.

2

By the time Abigail got back to her half-finished window, it was eleven o’clock. At eleven-fifteen the telephone rang. It was her mother.

I tried to get you earlier, her mother said.

I was out, Abigail replied. Helping Cynthia clean her kitchen cabinets.

I thought you might have been out shopping, her mother said. Abigail felt a prickle of irritation. Her mother had the habit of most mothers—returning to her own train of thought, while you were sidetracked from what you had to say.

I got the most wonderful grapefruit at the store this week, her mother continued. It really is in season.

Remembering what she’d been advising her mother to do the last time they’d spoken, Abigail said, Have you been staying off your feet as much as you can? Like the doctor said?

How can I? With forty million things to do around this place.

Why don’t you get a day worker then? Abigail asked. They don’t cost all that much. At least to help with the heavy work.

I don’t want other people in my house, her mother replied. Handling the vases and things. If they ever dropped something, that’d be the end of it. I’d rather do my own work in my own house. As long as I’m able to.

I thought you said that Mildred Warren had a maid who was just terrific, Abigail persisted.

Oh, that one, her mother said. I wouldn’t want any part of her. Mildred told me that she’s been banging into the furniture with the vacuum cleaner and leaving black marks on the legs. You’d think she rode it around the room like one of those bumper cars you used to go on in the amusement park—with that pesky Hamilton boy.

The Dodge-Em ride, Abigail recalled. What difference does it make if she does leave a few little scuff marks here and there? Some very fine steel wool would take them off in two seconds.

"It’s not just the legs of the furniture, Abigail. Mildred says she dulls all the fixtures. I don’t know how she does it, but she does. Every faucet in Mildred’s house looks like pewter, almost."

"All right, all right, don’t get a dayworker, Abigail said. But at least try to sit down more. Let some of the housework go."

I’ll try, her mother said. But you know how it is. Once you get doing something.

Yes, I know, Abigail said.

Well, when are you coming up here?

Right before Christmas, I hope. A couple of days before.

You’ll let me know beforehand, so I can start getting things ready.

Of course, Abigail said. Her mother had done it again. In her mind she was back home watching a maid careening around the living room in a bumper car.

When will you let me know?

Soon. I told you a week ago I was going to talk to Mr. Chapman about Christmas week as soon as I got the chance.

When do you think you’ll have the chance?

"Monday, or the day after that. Don’t worry. It’ll all be taken care of."

To Abigail it seemed that older people had a social security system apart from the government’s. You told them the same thing over and over again, and they asked the same questions over and over again, until whatever you were talking about was almost a litany. It was the parents’ way of enjoying the same sense of security that you felt as a child when they read you the same bedtime story night after night, until you’d memorized it.

Being aware of all this, Abigail always tried to be patient with her mother. But when you were having trouble with the veins in your legs, you shouldn’t be worrying about entrusting a piece of cut glass to the dust rag of a stranger. Her mother’s generation had taken housework to heart, making the home an intimate part of the woman herself, something not to be seen or touched by anyone from the outside. Abigail knew she could never feel that way about her apartment. She had made it look as well as it could, though, and she kept the dirt under control. But when the day came that she needed help around the house, she’d get it. As you start to turn towards eternity, you don’t notice the places they miss.

She needed no help now, that was for sure. She was strong and healthy, and the housework was good exercise; if you did it right, it provided so much exercise that you could do without a health club membership. Saving the cost of a health club and a maid was beating New York at its own game—and one of the obvious advantages of getting up early in the morning.

You’ll call me Monday or Tuesday, then? her mother was saying.

Yes, I’ll take care of it. Don’t be worrying about it. And for heaven’s sake, stay off your feet. Sit down and read a magazine or a book or something.

"Well, I can’t just sit. I have to be doing something."

Then sit down while you’re doing something.

I’ve never been able to iron sitting down.

What was there about departing from any set routine that was unthinkable? Abigail wondered.

You could iron just a few things at a time, Abigail suggested.

Oh, when I do a wash, I like to just get through it, her mother replied.

The hand in which Abigail was holding the telephone receiver slumped. Raising her eyes to the ceiling, she resigned herself once again.

"Okay, have it