Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner Page A

hurt women could lick their wounds together. As though Katherine knew what it was to be hurt; she was the one who did the hurting.
    “How long have you known him?”
    “Four years.”
    “Oh, wow,” Katherine said. And Theresa couldn’t conceal from herself just the faintest hint of pleasure at Katherine’s surprise. “You used to say that I was the big liar in the family.”
    “I never lied,” Theresa said quickly. “I just said I was with friends from school. And it was true.”
    “He was from school?”
    “A teacher.” She got suddenly irrationally concerned that Katherine would be able to find out who it was. “I never had him for anything, but he taught there.”
    “What happened?” Katherine asked.
    “He went back to his wife.”
    “Mmm,” Katherine said. “That’s a rough one.” Katherine, the stewardess of life, consulting a flight manual.
    Not that she hadn’t expected it, Theresa found herself adding. Not that she hadn’t urged him to forget her and go back to his wife. After all, he had three children who adored him.
    “Oh, children,” said Katherine, as though saying now she understood, it explained everything.
    “I suppose,” Theresa said, “you’re going to tell Mom and Dad.”
    “No,” Katherine said, “of course not. But you should tell them something. They’ve been worried sick about you.”
    “If I start eating again they’ll forget all about it.”
    “What about in the meantime?”
    “Tell them it’s because I haven’t been to church in too long,” Theresa said with a grin. If a little life was returning to her it was returning not to her body or soul but to the sardonic imp Martin Engle had found in her mind. “As a matter of fact, I’ll go to church with Mom on Sunday and get cured. I’ll walk in very slowly—”
    “Theresa!” Katherine protested, laughing.
    “Why not? I’ll walk in very slowly. I’m pretty weak now, anyway. Maybe I’ll take Dad’s cane from when he had the sprained ankle. And then after the mass I’ll throw up the cane and shout, ‘I can walk again!’ ”
    Katherine giggled. “It’s not all that bad an idea, though,” shesaid after a moment. “I mean, not all that stuff, but you could go to church and say you felt better and sort of slowly—”
    “Why?” Theresa asked. “Why should I?”
    “Because if you’re not going to tell them the truth, you have to tell them something else.”
    “Why?”
    “Because they’re worried about you,” Katherine said, obviously puzzled. “Because they love you.”
    But she didn’t believe that, hadn’t believed it in years. How could they? How could they not believe it would have been better for her to have died the first time she was ill instead of turning into whom she had. She might get angry at them when she saw the pleasure in their faces when Katherine visited, but she got angry because they were right, not because they were wrong. True, Katherine was a hypocrite who never let them see her real self, but after all, weren’t they right to prefer that? What was so great about real selves? About the way people really were when you stripped off the pretty faces and hypocritical manners? Once during a TV newscast years ago on a political scandal in the city she’d heard her father say, “They’ll be sorry they opened up that can of worms,” and the image had stayed with her. The can was a bright, neat-looking can on the outside but the worms were pink and slimy and looked more like intestines, or something else you’d find if you turned yourself inside out, than like the dry gray worms that crawled through the ground. She remembered now how once, just once, a year or so after the operation, maybe less, she’d looked in the mirror at her back and seen the shiny wormlike scar in her back and never looked again for years. Until the day before she’d begun City and met Martin Engle and by then the scar had imbedded itself much more deeply in her. Now it was just a neat seam where