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STEVEN IVORY: Women Without Men
I enjoy Margot's company. She's hip in a classic way--curious, open, cosmopolitan and quietly dynamic. Doesn't seem easily seduced by what goes on around her.
And, she's an impeccable dresser. When I told her she doesn't look seventy-eight, Margot, a professor of early American literature, admonished me: "Of course, I do. This is what seventy-eight looks like."
Our conversation--the weather, politics, the arts--comes easy. Not wanting her to be discomforted by the queries of a stranger, I don't ask much. But one day the subject of men somehow came up, and I asked Margot if she had one.
"I gave that up thirty-five years ago," she replied, with the detached nonchalance of someone recalling when they stopped smoking or swore off sweets.
Literally?
"Literally. I was married for almost thirty years to a man I loved dearly and gave three children. We divorced while in our forties. He remarried and I raised the kids. For me, that was the end of men."
What she'd just said, I told Margot, has long fascinated me.
I've always wondered how a woman can break up with a man and never again allow themselves another relationship.
Generations of women in my family have done this. Mama, after she and Daddy divorced, did this. So did one of her sisters, as did their mother, after leaving my grandfather. It's as if one relationship can finally take such utter and incontestable toll on a woman's heart that she declares herself done with it. All of it. Forever.
Margot shook her head. Marriage left her hopelessly disillusioned. "I felt like I had failed," she said, taking what seemed like a nervous glance at her watch.
"All our lives women are told our purpose is to find our 'soulmate.' You find a man and guess what? He's not the one. Or maybe you're not HIS one. After my divorce, I dated a little bit, but men, no offense, are crazy. I just said, 'Oh, shoot, I don't want to do this anymore.'
Sometimes, you have to understand, it is more...DIGNIFIED to give up. "Now," she said with absolutely no trace of irony, "I leave my soul to Otis Redding."
According to Margot, the choice of many older divorcees and widows to go it alone is bound by the archaic notion that she dutifully fill her life with tending to her kids. Or developing a career.
However, Margot is saddened that the age of women who are "giving up," is, in her opinion, getting younger.
"I'm meeting women on campus in their forties, even thirties, who are planning their lives around the idea they may not find a suitable partner after all. They're saying, 'It's okay,' but they don't mean it. Privately, we are all very disappointed with the revelation that a decent man is so hard to find."
I wanted to say to Margot, Now wait just a minute, but I didn't. After all, I did ask. And I appreciated the insight. Besides, her taxi had arrived.
"There is an upside to being alone," she said, gathering her plastic bags of produce and baked goods. "When you marry, there's this sense of being done with self exploration and discovery. It's like you cross some finish line. Why? You shouldn't stop growing just because you're married. But this is what can happen."
Raising up from the bench, Margot conceded that she would have enjoyed her journey with the right man.
However, being single, she insisted, thrust her into a rich life she could never imagine experiencing with her husband: travel; her professorship; deep relationships with her children and with a family of friends entirely of her own choosing. What about sex, I wondered. To myself.
"And," she winked, sliding into the taxi's back seat, "I get to have conversations on benches with people like yourself." That, I couldn't argue with.
Steven Ivory's book, FOOL IN LOVE (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster) is in stores now or at Amazon.com (www.Amazon.com) Respond to him via STEVRIVORY@AOL.COM or MYfeedback@eurweb.com
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