The dean turned his round eyes in her direction. Miss Saltzman? A question?
She caught sight of her chairman, sitting with his head down. She hesitated for only a moment. This is wrong, she said. The poet has a right to the language he chooses. He has a right to be heard. The students have a right to hear him.
—This assembly is dispersed, the dean said. This man may not read to this assembly! He looked nervous, and when Brenda continued to argue—The students have a right to hear him!—he said, That’s nonsense, and he left the room.
The crowd made an anxious, deep noise. A few students left, gathering their belongings hastily. Then Grace, from her seat, spoke in a clear voice. I’m sorry, she said to the poet. I guess you can’t give a reading. But—would you just read a poem for me?
—Sure thing, said the poet, smiling, and he read an antiwar poem about a black American draftee. The audience settled and listened. Two black students cheered.
Someone else raised a hand. Would you read a poem for me?
Someone else. Would you read a poem for me?
One night Brenda was cooking spaghetti sauce, shoeless, a glass of red wine at her elbow, when the doorbell rang. It took her a second to identify the unfamiliar sound. She answered the door in her socks, spoon in hand. The door had panes of glass halfway up, and she saw that her visitor was Richie, Lee’s husband, looking down at his shoes. Brenda knew that she’d been waiting for this. She opened the door, saying Hi, Richie, and then had a moment of panic, of loss of trust in herself. What if this wasn’t Richie but only someone who looked like him, someone asking directions or collecting for charity? But it was Richie, and what was going to happen next would not mean what it would in her life as it used to be, a life in which she didn’t march against war or confront the dean.
Richie stepped into the apartment and looked around. Not bad, he said. He took her in his arms, as she wished him to, and nuzzled past her hair to her lips.
—I’m not sexy, she said, through his kiss. She was thick—chunky—with short blond hair that became more straggly if she grew it.
—You’re my type.
His smell was familiar. Some previous lover had Richie’s smell, and she thought of a woman who’d flirted with her for months but had never come closer. Richie’s arms were short but powerful, holding her firmly. She probably should have been offended when he led her to the bedroom—presumably he’d been looking for a horizontal surface when he looked around the living room, but she had no couch—and laid her on the bed without even saying, Shall we do this? But she was only amused and happy.
And then the sex was not what she expected. She had imagined—she had imagined this more than once—brusque, all but rough sex from this practical, straightforward man. But Richie moved in a measured way, maybe following a mental checklist—what to touch first, what to kiss next. She was on birth control pills, but she would have liked him to have inquired or to have offered to use a condom. When he was done, she said, Lee doesn’t know you do this?
—She doesn’t say she knows.
—You don’t talk about it.
—We don’t talk about it.
He was acknowledging that he saw other women habitually. That didn’t bother her, but something did bother her. It should have been her disloyalty to Lee, but it wasn’t, and she swallowed hard as she lay naked on her creased sheets, sweaty in a way she’d been missing. Then she knew: when she’d first seen her, it was Lee she wanted to touch—her hair, her neck. Now she didn’t even mind betraying Lee. She scarcely knew her, and the recorder was a bit silly, but Brenda would have preferred it if her politics—founded, after all, on notions of justice—made her just.
—I’m a slut, she said experimentally.
—Don’t use words like that, please. He stood up and she heard him in the bathroom. He didn’t close the door. She smelled the spaghetti sauce, and it smelled burned. Had she left the flame on when she went to the door? Are you hungry? she said, when he came out.
—I ate.
—Do you want a glass of wine?
—No, thanks.
What kind of lovers could they be, if he wouldn’t drink wine and talk? He left quickly. The sauce was not burned but congealed. She added water and ate spaghetti with lumpy sauce. She was starving. After she ate, she settled into her only comfortable chair with a second glass of wine and a pile of papers to mark. Now she felt better. As a woman with a secret married lover, even one not quite to her liking, she’d feel more confident in the classroom and among the faculty. She drank her wine and corrected her students’ spelling. On the bottom of their essays she wrote encouraging suggestions for expanding and deepening their modest thoughts. One boy wrote about riding bulls. The challenge was to stay on the bull for six seconds. In bed she cried.
When Richie didn’t come back, Brenda forgot that she hadn’t been sure she wanted him as her lover—of course she did. Three weeks after he rang her doorbell, she stayed late in her office to meet with students. When the last one left, after she’d explained yet again about periods and commas, Brenda sensed somebody in the corridor, and she went to see if a student was too shy to enter. Richie stood near the tiled wall. Are you done? he said.
—You came here?
—This is a better time for me.
—How did you know where I was?
—It’s not hard.
He took her hand as they left the building in the dark and led her to his car in the visitors’ lot. She was too happy to pull her hand away. He was silent as they drove, then began talking about the war. He’d studied the geography of Vietnam, maybe beginning before his cousin was killed. Richie’s political views were without vanity or narcissism: he had no interest in his image, only in ending the war.
It did not seem to have occurred to him that she might have had other plans. They drove to her house. He’d brought a bottle of Scotch, and she drank a little with water in it. He drank it neat and asked for an ashtray. I didn’t know you smoked, she said.
—I smoke when I drink Scotch, he said, lighting a cigarette. She smoked too. Lighting up, Richie tipped back his head, then ducked forward and smiled. He looked younger then, with a smile that seemed to ask for approval. His jaw looked less solid, and she could imagine the teenage boy he had been. He drank half of what was in his glass and crossed the room to put his arms around her. He rested there, stood still as if to say it had been a long wait. And it had been. She moved first, turning her face to kiss him, and he turned it back with his hand, which swiveled her chin almost roughly, so she was afraid she’d offended him. She felt something familiar: a fear of giving offense and a loss of capacity to take offense, which seemed to come at the same time with a man. She’d left her car in the lot at the college without mentioning it and would have a long walk in the morning. She was afraid of Richie and excited to be afraid. She felt a moment of nostalgia for her crush on Lee. It would be different with a woman, but then she’d be a lesbian, and surely she was not a lesbian. Anyway, something about this fear was irresistible.
The sex was better this time, and she struggled to come, wanting both to prolong and end the sensation. He seemed to let her come when he chose. Can we talk a little? she said when he stood.
—Gotta piss, he said. He looked at his wrist, though he’d taken his watch off. When he came out of the bathroom, naked, he went into the living room and sat down next to his Scotch. Brenda could see him through the doorway, and she put on her robe and followed. He patted his knee and she hesitated, wishing she had a sofa. She sat on a nearby chair and said, What was it like to grow up here? and Richie became talkative, telling stories of working in the canneries on high school vacations, going to Yosemite, driving out to caves and canyons with girls. Partway through, he left the room and came back dressed but then talked some more. Then he stood, leaned over to slap her thigh, and left the apartment, kissing her on the mouth on his way out.
She tried to think as Richie did about politics and the war. She thought that if she coul
d pay attention to the world, not just to herself, she would be able to put to one side the question of when he’d come back—but she couldn’t. For a day she’d hold the thought of his return like a drink she sipped all evening; then it was gone. Her classes distracted her a little. The college administration’s repressive politics affected her students every day, and the government that waged distant war showed up in her students’ anxiety and silence, and their fear of the draft. She liked these kids and wanted to spend time with them—she was more comfortable with her students than with anyone else in town, including Richie.
She phoned Lee, choosing a time when Richie would surely be out, and told her she was too busy for recorder lessons, and after that she never picked up the instrument.
Richie began to come more often, and she wondered if she’d won out over some other woman. He became more playful, more talkative. Twice he let her cook him dinner. She didn’t know what excuse he made to Lee, but it was sweet to cook for him, as sexy as sex. They talked about dogs and cats. Richie and Lee had had one of each, and both had died. It was like the night they’d talked about his youth: she never heard him speak for so long except about the war.
Artie was sure Harold needed him more than ever, now that he’d become a famous person, or maybe just a person who seemed famous to the people who already knew him. Artie clipped newspaper articles that mentioned Harold or left them circled in red, the paper folded on the kitchen table. He had seen a fairly decent review of Harold’s book and a short article about a panel discussion in which Harold had participated. He had a knack for finding mentions of Harold. Something would make him know he had to read that story and in the tenth paragraph he’d see his friend’s name, or pretend name—the name of his successful self, Artie said to Evelyn, now that Harold Abramovitz, the boy he’d gone to school with, had been murdered and thrown in a ditch. Dumps his name, dumps his wife, he said.
—You never liked her, and his name is his business, Evelyn said. Maybe he got tired of spelling it.
—I knew it would happen before they ever looked at each other.
—Knew they’d get married? She was cutting out a pattern on the kitchen table, making something for Carol’s coming baby. Carol was married to a law student, lived in Queens, and belonged to a synagogue—which both irritated and tickled Artie. She worked in the city planner’s office.
—Get married, get divorced, the whole thing, he said. They wouldn’t listen to me, of course. Why should anybody listen to stupid Artie? But look at this.
He’d found an article in the paper about intellectuals who opposed the war, and it mentioned something Harold had published in The Nation. The bastard didn’t tell me, he said. Now it’s probably the next issue already.
Artie found the issue, read the piece—disagreed—and cut it out to mail to Brenda in California, where she’d moved for no good reason. He didn’t call Harold, but Harold called him a week or so later.
I presume, Artie said to him, you are calling to quiz me about your famous article.
—I didn’t think you’d see it.
—If you want me to see it, you could send me a copy, or you could at least call and tell me it exists. Yes, I saw it.
—And what did you think?
—A ridiculous argument, Artie said. He tried to remember just what the article had said.
—Well, that happens not to be why I called, Harold said. Do you know what happened to Beatrice London?
Artie, who had been leaning on the wall in the kitchen, said, Let me take this on the other phone, yelling to Evelyn to hang up the kitchen phone. He was postponing hearing about Beatrice London. Whatever had happened to Beatrice London, Artie—who still sold shoes and played the recorder for hours each night—didn’t want to know about it.
What happened, Harold insisted on telling him, was that Beatrice London had been sued by someone else she’d informed on, a woman, and the woman—who insisted she had never been a Communist and produced witnesses who had known her well in the thirties, and even known Beatrice in the thirties—had won.
—The mood’s different—things are different, Harold said. He kept in touch with people he’d known from the union and had heard all about it.
—So what do you want me to do about it? Artie said.
—Ask to be reinstated.
—I don’t see you asking to be reinstated.
—That has nothing to do with it, Harold said. I was a Communist. And I wasn’t turned in by Beatrice London.
—And teaching in a high school would be a comedown for the mighty Professor Abramovitz, Artie said. Excuse me, Abrams.
—Right. I hire high school teachers to wipe my behind. Listen, you idiot, go down to the Board of Ed and see if you can get your job back. You know you want it.
—Why should they give me my job back?
—Because they’ll be afraid you’ll sue them. Because they’ve given five people their jobs back. Don’t you pay attention?
—Should I go there or write them a letter?
—Yeah, Harold said, write them a letter. Call me and read it to me before you mail it.
—You think I’ve forgotten how to spell, crawling around on the floor with the goddamn shoes?
—You never knew how to spell, Harold said, which was not true; Artie had always loved words even more than their meanings. He read the dictionary.
—Who do I write to?
—Everybody. Write to the superintendent, and CC every name you can find at 110 Livingston. I’ll call the union and get them to give us a list.
—What did they do to Bea London?
—You called her Bea?
—Beatrice is Bea, no? Used to make her mad. Did she go to prison?
Harold laughed. I don’t think so. How are your kids?
They talked for an hour.
It was Christmas break when Brenda finally got around to reading the essay from The Nation that her father had sent her. Her parents had wanted her to fly home for the holidays, but she didn’t. Richie had hinted that he’d have more free time because Lee was going to visit relatives.
But Brenda never knew when Richie would come, and she had only one date marked on her calendar during the Christmas season. The Speak Out group proposed having a party, and pleased Brenda by wanting her company. Most were estranged from their families or far from home, stranded in this agricultural valley when they’d meant to go either to Los Angeles and become movie stars or to San Francisco, where they’d live in an enlightened and druggy society.
—We could do it at my house, she’d said, and today she was straightening her apartment in readiness. She had an uneasy feeling that the college administration would not approve of this party. But none of these kids were in her classes—well, Grace was going to take Brenda’s composition class in the spring, but Grace didn’t count. She was older than Brenda. These were good kids, and nobody else would know.
It was a few days before Christmas, and she hadn’t heard from Richie for weeks. Brenda had been inside all day; the weather was chilly and raw, and she’d been postponing a trip to the store. It was maddening to care, but if she left she might miss him, and she couldn’t leave. She was desultorily straightening her desk when she found the pages torn from The Nation. HAROLD, her father had written in red in the top margin of the first page, with an arrow, in case she didn’t notice the byline. And near the top, in the left margin, he’d scrawled something else she couldn’t read. She carried the pages across the room. Her apartment was warmed by one heater, under a grate in the floor, and the only way to get truly warm in the damp California winter was to stand on the grate, which she did for so long her shoes had developed ridges to match the wrought-iron grille’s pattern. She stood swaying slightly and read Harold’s essay. Vietnam and the Graying Radical, the piece was called.
In the last few tempestuous months, as the inspired and picturesque young with shaggy heads and peace signs have taken to the streets, among the myriad reactions of their elders it would be a mistak
e to overlook the rueful and perhaps embarrassed look on the faces of older men and women marching beside them—or not marching, hesitating as they slowly lace up cracked walking shoes in outmoded styles that have already tramped many miles.
Now she made out what her father had written next to these words. What does he know about shoes? Harold discussed the views of several aging thirties radicals toward the Vietnam war, using their books and articles as well as interviews to discuss first a man in his fifties who now led the peace movement in Cleveland and had been finding something to protest about the American government since 1935; then a professor who’d written books linking radical American movements to those in Europe and elsewhere; and finally a journalist who had renounced his early radicalism and now attacked the Left.
She kept reading, standing, until she reached a more personal passage near the end.
It may be of some use to describe the political and, indeed, moral shifts in thinking of one obscure young radical, who has aged into a less political person—an English professor—but who watches the marches with envy and has tentatively come to the conclusion that it makes sense to participate, his doubts stemming not from uncertainty about this abhorrent war but about the moral validity of protest when protest is sexy, when it’s personally useful, and when it’s fun.
Now she went into her living room and sat down to concentrate, as Harold described times she’d heard about only from her father. He had grown up the child of immigrant Jewish socialists, he explained, and had been drawn in when he began attending Communist protests and marches as a bystander. But I have to admit, Harold wrote, that I was as entranced by the image of myself—the fervent young radical—as by the ideology I embraced. There was something Brenda the English teacher didn’t like about Harold’s prose. She didn’t like embraced. But she kept reading. She’d always found him irresistible but absurd, absurd but irresistible.
When We Argued All Night Page 20