Hunters and Gatherers by Francine Prose Page A

how much she muscled down, the gnocchi sat there, undiminished, winning a battle to the death between her and potato pasta. Each time she swallowed a mouthful, three gnocchi took its place.
    Maybe the gnocchi were on her side, keeping her mouth glued shut. Because as soon as she’d got the last bit of starch unstuck from her palate, she started talking, begging, coming up with reasons and microadjustments that would enable her and Dennis to stay together forever. She felt as if Dennis were a brick wall she kept running into. Though maybe she only thought that because the restaurant had brick walls—white brick walls that, in the past, she and Dennis could make vanish by staring into each other’s eyes until the room went out of focus…
    “It’s not Titania’s fault,” Isis was saying. “Nor is it Freya’s, exactly. Patriarchy turns the mother-daughter bond into the relation between the seasoned jailbird and the first-time offender, hardened prisoners showing new convicts the ropes of the penal system—and in the process allowing the system to continue. Chinese mothers bind their daughters’ feet. In Africa it’s the mothers who do the clitoridectomies. I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s impossible to watch TV without Barbara Walters blabbing on about female circumcision. For most American men the big news is that women have a clitoris to begin with. For millennia Mom’s been the gal in charge of removing your pleasure button—is it any wonder it’s not a relationship of great trust? What about your mother, Martha? Are you close? Do you get along?
    Martha didn’t want to think about her mother. It had much the same effect on her as thinking about Dennis, although her mother and Dennis weren’t at all alike. Martha wasn’t one of those women who suddenly realize that the men they love are their moms in drag! Dennis was mean and shallow, Martha’s mother was just a mess. When Martha called her mother, they talked doctors, arthritis, TV, money, what the doctor said, what Donahue said, what was on sale at the Pic-Way, what Martha’s dad’s death benefits would and wouldn’t cover. Martha’s mother had nothing in common with Dennis except for a remarkably similar knack for making Martha feel tragic, paralyzed, doomed, and hopeless.
    “She’s in Ohio,” Martha said. “I hardly see her—”
    “The Midwest?” said Isis. “You come from the Midwest? I don’t know why I thought…I had the impression that you were visiting your parents on Fire Island. What a sparrowlike little person you are, Martha. Look how you’re watching me. That quality of watching—it’s one of the things about yourself that you undervalue. You think it’s one of your worst traits, but in fact it’s among your best.”
    Knocked breathless by the accuracy (she hoped) of Isis’s assessment, Martha could only mumble, “Oh, no, those were my friend ’s parents who live on Fire Island.” Immediately she felt that she had somehow disappointed Isis—which, as usual, sharpened her craving for Isis’s approval and eradicated any lingering doubts about her eccentricities.
    “What was I saying?” Isis asked.
    Martha tensed. Was this a test? She said, “You were talking about female circumcision. How your own mother did it.”
    “Well, not my own mother,” said Isis. “One’s own mother. Isn’t it interesting how we segued from the subject of food to the subject of mothers and sex? Anyway…we’re just now getting a glimpse of the outer limits of diet, way beyond mood and you are what you eat and getting or not getting cancer. I met this great Romanian nutritionist at the World Healing Conference and happened to mention to her that I was terribly accident-prone.
    “The dietician gave me a fabulous book about gluten’s effect on the pineal gland, which scientists associate with clairvoyance and ESP. Not only was I screwing up my neurotransmitters, I was burning down my psychic telephone lines to the future—say, the