(Written under her name Edith Kokernot, probably after her divorce in 1971 and before 1978.)
Having an affair with John Davies was certainly the farthest thing from Elinor’s mind when she started her new job. Divorced, 40 and dead serious about her new career, Elinor had become totally involved in her work the few months she had worked at the advertising agency. She was a dedicated person, knowing full well that she had to be for survival. If she didn’t make it this time at her age, there wouldn’t be many more chances.
She sat staring at her typewriter…nothing creative would come into her head. “Oh damn!” she thought, “This copy has got to be in John’s hands by noon, and I haven’t written an acceptable line this whole morning!”
Finally, as though the word ‘damn’ had released the flood gates, the words finally started to flow, and she quickly finished the last of the radio copy for the small teen apparel shop. She had been writing about blue jeans, mod clothes, boys stacked heels, and wide leather belts for a hard rock FM radio station. Almost with relief, she rolled another sheet of paper into her typewriter, carefully typing the name of the advertising agency and the client in the left-hand corner, Conroe State Bank – Radio – 60 Seconds. "This is my more speed," she thought as she composed a spot about savings accounts.
When Elinor finally put the finished radio spots on John Davies’ desk, she went directly to the powder room. She had been at her desk solidly since 9 a.m. and it was now 11:25 a.m. “Thank goodness I’m through with that,” she said half aloud. “Awake until after 2 a.m. and trying to be creative. Deadlines closing in on me. My God, I’m too old for this! Where’s the simple life I used to live?" She took an aspirin out of a small pill box in her purse. “Maybe this will stop the pounding in my head.” She gulped it down with water from the drinking fountain.
Elinor finished touching up her face, adding a bit of mascara and rouge. She smoothed on fresh lipstick, powdered the dark circles under her deep gray eyes, and left the room feeling somewhat better. “Perhaps I can cope, after all,” she thought, “but a little coffee might help!” As her heels clicked down the long hall, she heard the elevator door open onto the agency floor. John walked towards her.
Elinor’s immediate reaction was “Damn him…he’s been home sleeping it off in that king-sized bed while I’ve done half a day’s work.”
“Morning, gorgeous,” he called as he patted her fondly on the shoulder and passed on quickly towards the office. Elinor’s resentment faded and she went on to the coffee room, feeling lighthearted again.
She smiled as she remembered the peculiar turn of events last evening. He had said rather angrily, “Don’t act so surprised. So, I kissed you. Is that so bad? You know damn well we both have had this thing between us. I’ve felt it ever since your first week at the agency. Call it body chemistry, whatever you want, but my God, when you would accidentally brush against my arm, or let your hand touch mine, when we went over copy together, or drank coffee. Damn, don’t tell me you weren’t aware of my watching you, wanting you. You, so prim and proper, so business like, so unattainable! I swear to God, I have never touched or even half-looked at an employee before. And you were just as aware of my presence. Don’t lie about it, Elinor.”
Elinor fumbled for words. It was true. Yet she had never even admitted it to herself. “Well, yes, you do have a certain appeal, but it went no further than that, I swear.”
She was still flustered by his rather brusque approach to the subject. Before she could say more, he kissed her again, only more thoroughly this time, as though the first kiss were a question, rather than a statement as to her real feelings: “Is it alright to do this? I just wanted a sample. Can we go on from here? Do I dare?”
His strong hands caressed the shape of her slender body. His tongue searching, she felt him strong and masculine and very close. His breathing was heavy as he moved against her. Elinor stiffened, pulled away.
“Elinor, damn it, quit this play acting. We’re adults. You’re not sixteen. I know you want me as badly as I want you.”
“John,” she said, as she sat up and attempted to straighten her hair, to have something to do with her hands. “I swear, I’m just not this kind of a person.” She tried to push him away again, but he was persistent. He knew what he wanted, and he didn’t want to hear her excuses. He smoothed her dark hair back from her face, kissed her temples, and again found her mouth. His busy fingers soon had her blouse open. Elinor felt her reserve going. She knew it was wrong, wrong for her, but involuntarily she reached out to him. It was so natural for her to respond. Her near Puritan upbringing was losing control. John was too much and both their emotions too strong. It all seemed a natural course of events. Elinor closed her eyes.
Elinor returned to the present and looked deep into her cup of coffee. “Funny how daylight brings one back to his senses. I am enjoying the memory, yet I know what happened is not for me. It’s as though that happened to someone far away, another person, completely detached from me.”
When she walked back to her desk, she purposely avoided looking at John as she passed his office. Elinor had been divorced nine months earlier, after what seemed like endless months of battling, separations, and legal fees. The mourning and unhappiness of the divorce had occurred for nearly two years before its finality, and she felt nothing but freedom and the urge to make a new beginning once it was all over. No looking back, she vowed. It’s finished. But finding a job she liked as well as finding one that paid well was a tedious process. Employers were not thrilled over 40-year-old housewives with limited experience who were looking for work. After weeks of persistence, endless letters and interviews, and quite a lot of luck, she found a job as a copywriter with an advertising agency, a small one but she was delighted with it because it afforded her the chance to work on her own. She had to do the usual office amenities. “Thank God, I took that ninth grade typing course a hundred years ago,” she told a friend, after doing 65 words a minute on a speed test. "I honestly think that’s what got me the job. Not my experience with an ad agency eighteen years ago, not my journalism degree, not my appearance. Just the damn typing! Insist that your daughters take typing whether they ever expect to be a secretary or not!"
Her writing consisted of taking over the accounts that nobody else wanted, and she did a good job. She helped out with typing on other jobs, too, and did some bookkeeping occasionally. She was learning the advertising business inside and out which was just what she wanted to do. And the agency was happy to have someone like Elinor who was willing to work hard even when it meant overtime, which it often did.
Gradually the hurt of the broken marriage was slipping away, her mind being filled with more productive thoughts and challenged at last. She could feel her children’s pride in her when they told their friends about their mother’s new job. Her son was delighted with the mod-teen commercials.
“I don’t believe you actually wrote all that stuff. You just couldn’t,” he said.
“Oh yes, I did and there’s a bonus, too. You can buy clothes there at a 20% discount. How about that?” she beamed.
Elinor had little time for social life now. There had been a few suitors, but they soon discovered that her job meant more to her than they did; that marriage or a serious affair was out of the question with Elinor.
She had been thrilled when John Davies had asked if she would assist him on a publicity campaign for one of the local politicians; this was her first big chance to work on something really big. Since their days were so full, and it was almost impossible to shelve anything, John had invited her to have dinner with him after work, with plans to go to his apartment afterwards to work on the project since it was more convenient for both of them than going to the office which was downtown.
They had worked steadily for four hours, researching, Elinor typing, John talking into his tape recorder, and finally, at 12:30 a.m. Elinor picked up her handbag and papers to leave.
“I guess that’s enough for tonight,” she groaned.
“How about a light drink just to unwind. We’d both sleep better. Maybe it’ll drown that pot of coffee we polished off?” he asked. “Please.”
At his insistence she agreed and sat wearily back on the black Naugahyde sofa, kicked off her shoes and curled her knees up under her, leaned back with a big yawn and stretch. John appeared with the lime and vodka drinks.
“Here’s a gimlet. Very mild, I promise. Cheers.” He handed Elinor hers and sat down beside her.
“Do you know, Elinor, we have never once had a personal conversation in the four months you’ve been with us, not even over coffee. It’s work, work, work. That’s all we ever do or think about. My mind wouldn’t even relax enough at the restaurant to get off the subject of this campaign. Let’s not bring it up for the next twenty minutes. Let’s just talk about anything else under the sun but work. O.K.? You must be exhausted. Here’s to a job well done.”
She smiled. John was a man of medium build, almost rugged in appearance, hair slightly greyed but very dark. He had dark blue eyes, always smiling with little turned up creases. Even when his mouth was solemn, as though he were teasing and laughing. He was pleasant to work for. She had never heard anyone say an unkind word about John. He was not a flirt, though all the girls in the office enjoyed him. Perhaps that was why. He was fun to be around, but never embarrassed them with off color remarks or gestures. “Clean cut” would describe him perfectly.
“I looked over your application again the other day, just to brush up on who and what you are,” John said. “I know you’re divorced. Is there someone else now? Is your ex still around?”
“No, John. To answer your first question, it’s too soon for there to be anyone else, at least for me it is. And no, my former husband doesn’t live here anymore, thank goodness. It was too painful when he did. I always worried about the prospect of running into him. Actually, now I don’t think it would bother me, but it used to.” She continued, “Have you ever been married? It’s the mystery of the office gals as to why you’re not now!”
“Well, there was someone long ago. It didn’t work out. I guess marriage just escaped me.”
“Or you escaped, I’ll bet,” She laughed. “Well, you should try it again, even with bad luck. I’d say there’s nothing like it, belonging to someone. I don’t regret the happiness we once shared.”
“Anyway, here’s a toast to a swinging bachelor,” Elinor raised her glass.
He responded with, “and to the gay divorcee,” raising his eyebrows. He started towards the kitchen to fix another drink.
“I’d better not, John. It’s late.”
“Come on, we’ll take it with us when I see you home. We’ve earned a little pleasure tonight.”
Elinor felt her earring drop to the floor. She was looking for it when he returned with their fresh drinks.
“Lost something?”
“Oh, I dropped my earring. It’s bound to be here.”
He felt under the couch and pulled it out.
“Here it is.”
He started to put it back on her earlobe instead of giving it to her. She laughed and pulled away.
“Give it to me John. You can’t put earrings on for someone else.”
As she reached for his hand to get the earring, his fingers closed around hers.
“Elinor, don’t you know why I wanted you to stay? I....,” he fumbled for words. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are? You’ve got an elegance about you that’s different somehow. You’re something very special. And don’t look at me like I’m a dirty old bachelor. I think you know what I mean, and I think you know the effect you’ve had on me.”
The rapidity of the excitement of their emotions had startled Elinor.
Afterwards, she said, “Is this the real reason you asked me to work with you tonight?”
“Good grief, Elinor. I asked you because you’re capable and fine. I didn’t plan it any more than you did. It just happened. I’ve just broken my own unwritten rule about no fraternizing with employees. Here’s to a rule just broken,” and touched her drink with his glass. She didn’t drink.
“John, I have to go.” She picked up her bag. He looked at her searchingly.
“Feeling guilty, huh? Elinor, I respect you more than you can imagine, for giving way to your emotions here with me.”
He kissed her lightly on the forehead and they left the apartment.
“I’ve got to forget last night. Got to get him off my mind!” Elinor thought as she slid back into her desk chair and began tidying up her desk. She marveled at the amount of wastepaper that had accumulated due to her creative efforts that morning. How could it take ten sheets of paper to get one good idea across that only takes sixty seconds to read she wondered. She checked her calendar to see what other deadlines he had to meet that week and was relieved that there were only two. “Mickey Mouse” John had called them. Easy and simple but necessary. And nobody else wants to do them, Elinor told herself.
“Want to go out and get a Po-boy with me?” a voice whispered softly behind her.
John startled her. She hadn’t seen him approach her desk. She smiled back at him.
“O.K., love to, but I can’t be away too long. Promised to help Madge with some of that Deauville Apartment copy. She’s swamped. It involves so much typing for the brochure.”
“Sure ‘nuff. We’ll be back at the stroke of one.”
They climbed into his Cutlass convertible. She tied a scarf on her head and leaned back against the seat as if to soak up all the autumn sun she could for the hour’s reprieve from the windowless office.
“You’re not sorry about what happened last night, are you?” He looked at her with some concern.
“No, why do you ask. Do I act like it?”
Silently, she thought, “If he only knew how concerned I am. I’ve broken one of my own pet rules of behavior. One I’ve expounded upon to my teenage daughter and son, that you have to be prepared to take the responsibility for your actions if you indulge in sex. It’s not a plaything. Sex was meant to be a tool to be used by two people in love in the bonds of matrimony. Any other way, it becomes cheap, meaningless, and a thing rather than an emotion. Sex should be equated with love."
“Well,” he continued, “you look kinda drawn, worried,” he pursued.
Elinor laughed and touched his hand which was so close on the seats. She felt so comfortable with him, like he was an old friend.
“Just plain old lack of sleep, mister. I’ll be in bed asleep before the news tonight. You can be sure of that.”
They ordered their Po-boys, staying in the car to eat them. She decided to be open with him, to bare her feelings.
“John, I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t admit that I do have some misgivings. I’ve always lived with pretty rigid ideas as to sex. Not that I’m against sex. But within marriage. It’s great and all that but tabu otherwise. I certainly am appalled at my behavior last night. I didn’t intend to let it go that far.”
“Well hell, Elinor, neither did I. But does one methodically plan something like that? It would ruin it. Take the beauty of the spontaneity away. Surely, we’re both adult enough to know when we’ve got something going between us that’s great. Surely whatever is mutually desirable between us, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else is alright.”
She was silent, thinking.
He looked at her incredulously, “You don’t honestly think of it as sinful, do you?” He was quite sincere, and she envied him of his guilt free countenance.
“Well, I don’t think going to bed with a casual acquaintance is exactly my kind of thing. What’s right for one person may not necessarily be right for another. I’m not questioning your behavior, John, but my own.”
“How long have you been divorced?” he demanded.
“Almost nine months.”
“How long has it been since you’ve had sexual intercourse?”
Elinor just looked at him. Then slowly she said, “I’ll be just as blunt as you. It’s really none of your business.”
“You’re right. But I wanted to know.”
“For God’s sake, John. Alright! About a year!”
“A year. You mean you’ve lived the life of a nun for a whole year? My God, no wonder you’re so tense.”
“John, for the love of God. I don’t know why we’re even talking about it this way. I just don’t think…”
“Elinor, surely you are not so naïve as to think that a normal human being, used to living a full life, should be condemned to live his whole remainder of life as a priest or virginal old maid. So, you’re not married. So, I am a bachelor. So, we have to get married just to have sex. It’s pretty obvious that neither of us has plans in that direction for the time being, but every human being needs affection…to love someone. Yes, I think there is a bond between us. Call it love if you want. Whether anything will come of it, neither of us knows. It doesn’t matter now. If it does, fine. The bells will ring. If not, what have we lost? We’ve only experienced a rich relationship between two people genuinely fond of each other. I respect you, your brains. I love your body. I’m not using you. You’re not using me. My God. If I just wanted sex, I’d pick up the first little mini-skirted gal that flounced by and made herself available, and I’d be sexually satisfied for a time. But I want more than that. A relationship that’s deeper but not binding at this point, and I think that’s what you want.” He left it as a question.
She said nothing but just looked down at her left hand, the bare ring finger, and remembered the commitment of marriage, never dreaming that once she was free, she would contemplate having an affair. She hadn’t put aside the possibility of sex with someone she loved someday, in the impossible to vision future, when she might once again consider marriage. But on this basis, never yet. She liked John and some of what he said made sense, though she had never allowed herself to look at it from his point of view before.
Ignoring her silence, he persisted, “Sometimes sex opens doors. Once you get sex out of the way or under control, you can get down to the basic relationship, really get to know that person. You wait and see. We’ll write better copy together,” he laughed which eased the tension bottled up inside Elinor. She knew he wanted an answer to his indefinite question, “Would she consider having an affair with him?”
“Well, I promised to get you back to the office by one, so let’s get going.”
He started the car, kissed her lightly on the lips before backing out and said, “I think we’ll be ready to go over that copy by tomorrow. I’ve got to see Dixon today at three. Do you think you could spend a couple hours going over the campaign tomorrow night? Would you like dinner again?” He winked, “You’ll be safe with me. Dixon will be there, too.”
“John, sure I can work, but I think I’ll have dinner with the children. Thanks just the same. They hate my being away too much in the evenings.”
Once back in the office she was so engrossed in her work that John was temporarily forgotten. But on the way home that evening there was a lot of time for thinking in the five o’clock traffic. Was she going to be just another divorcee having an affair? She had seen and heard of others doing just what she was on the brink of doing. She was vulnerable. She knew it was going to be difficult. She hadn’t realized how lonely she had been; hadn’t allowed herself to think. Could she be liberated yet remain soft, feminine? John had made her feel feminine again. Could she have an affair and still maintain her independence? Was she being used? Oh damn. She pressed the dial for another radio station to turn off a blaring ad on fried chicken. Hard rock strains of music came through to her and then her ad came on. “I’m his girl. That’s why they’ve got the most fantastic looking pants in town, for him and for me. Because I love to see him in those knits and Starcrest slacks. I’m very susceptible to shape, and his slacks from the Jean Machine have it. From that low on the hip styling, all the way down to the flared look. Those colors fascinate me and show him off.” The ad finished and hard rock came back on. She changed stations. “Did I write that?” she exclaimed. “A journalism degree for that? Well, here’s hoping it sells!”
She drove into the Lakeside subdivision where she lived. Waved to Jenny Oliver who was greeting her husband home in the driveway. There was Susan Lobe watering her chrysanthemums and, no doubt, waiting for her Jim to come home. She loved the neighborhood, but pangs of loneliness overcame her when she saw whole families together. She and Ted had lived here together for five years. She had chosen to stay on in the house, but life was different now. She was another person, not a housewife, contented mother of three, but a businesswoman, divorced, independent, paid her own bills, figured up the income tax, and managed a home. From all aspects, there was no shoulder to lean on. There is Dodie Evans talking to her Bill. She was pointing to the hedge telling him it needed cutting, no doubt and he would dutifully do it this weekend. Her life was as far apart from Dodie’s as if she lived in Germany. Why should Dodie, Susan and Jenny have a priority on companionship, sex, male conversation? Why should I not have the same opportunity if I want to? It’s my choice, my decision. John is attractive. I don’t have to worry that he will want to press me into a marriage I don’t want. He’s a confirmed bachelor, I’m sure. And I’m confirmed to a single existence, at least for the present.
As if to accentuate her thoughts, she added almost audibly, “I’ve had to work too hard to gain my independence. I am still searching for my own identity. Maybe an affair is the answer. Maybe it would liberate me from myself. Wouldn’t Jenn and Susan and Debby die if they knew what I was contemplating? Most housewives are so secure in their little cloistered worlds it would never enter their heads that I might be dissatisfied with my own. I, too, would have been shocked. Certainly, I will raise my daughters to be independent, to make up their own minds. I hope they are not as guilt ridden when they grow up as I seem to be. Perhaps I’d better read Germaine Greer and Helen Gurley Brown just for another viewpoint. I guess they have done a lot to liberate women, but I don’t want to lose my values. They are part of me, part of me.”
She turned into the driveway, her eleven-year-old daughter waiting for her and the white mongrel dog, Muffie. She greeted Debby, kissing lightly.
“Guess what, Mom? I made 98 on that math test!”
“Oh, Debby that’s great! I’m so proud of you. What else happened?”
Arm in arm they entered the house on Elm Street….