Eve's Stepchildren

January 1986

THE PEARLS HAD BEEN HER MOTHER’S, and her mother’s mother’s before, and even earlier had been extracted one at a time from the soft stomachs of Indian Ocean oysters.
A woman in a white dress had carried each oyster up the fifty feet from the underwater coral reefs to the waiting boats, and men with greedy hands had taken the oysters, pried them open and probed in the milky mantle for that lustrous ball of nacre, that jewel of the universe for which Caesar had set out to conquer Britain, for which the merchant man went and sold all that he had, for which countless women in white dresses had drowned in the Indian Ocean.
The pearls contained the history of the women who had dived for them, the women who had strung them together with knotted silken thread, the women who had worn them, the women who had passed on this heritage from generation to generation, a heritage of purity and passivity and perfection.
Grace fondled the pearls with pink-tipped fingers as she sat on the edge of the gray velvet sofa in the middle of her living room. When Roger came in, she could stand and plump the cushion on which she had been sitting with one surreptitious gesture. If Roger came home with company, that is. If Roger came home alone, she could sink back into the cushions as if she had had nothing better to do all afternoon after work than sit around in her good pearl gray knit outfit reading a book on—she picked up a book from the coffee table to check the title, Corporate Companions—a book on succeeding in business. A book that had been at the top of the best seller list for seven weeks. A book that might have been about Roger. Certainly not about Grace.
Grace was all nervous energy, edges and angles and a cloud of dark hair that wouldn’t ever stay in place. Her clothes were basic, practical, with shoes that she could walk in and sweaters just a little too large. She was prettier than she could ever imagine, and since she couldn’t imagine it she didn’t take the time to develop into what she might have been. She just knew that she didn’t fit into the world of women who belonged with the men in that book and so she didn’t try.
She opened the book in the middle, her eyes following her finger across and down the page, her ears listening for the sound of a car, followed by the slam of a car door, followed, or not followed, by men’s voices. There were no voices. She relaxed back, and the words on the page began to form sentences, take on meaning.
Roger kissed her after he had hung his double-breasted navy cashmere and wool overcoat in the closet, before he poured himself a drink. He might have stepped out of the pages of the book, a shock of blond hair falling over his penetrating blue eyes, the taut lean body and well-fitted suit and polished shoes of the successful man of business.
Eyes on the page, fingers on the pearls, she told herself not to comment on the drink. She swallowed the words as he swallowed the Scotch, then she moistened her lips with her tongue. “How did it go?” she finally asked when she realized he would not begin.
He shrugged. “Nothing new.”
“Then you didn’t . . . , they didn’t?” Her words were as jumbled as the words on the page.
The slight tic that appeared when he was annoyed pulled at the right corner of his mouth. “I told you, it takes a while. They want to make sure I’m the right man for the position.”
“You’ve been with them five years. Don’t they know by now?”
“Grace.”
She carefully closed the book and put it on the table, pointing to it as she spoke. “It says here that some of the best people get passed over because their families aren’t an asset to the company. Is that the problem?” She kept her eyes on the book so she wouldn’t have to see the way his mouth moved, as if he were chewing and then swallowing his words instead of speaking them.
He poured himself another drink. “It’s not about you.”
“Then why?”