When We Argued All Night

by Alice Mattison

  —Won’t they hire a substitute?

  —I’m subversive. Nobody but you would give me an A.

  —You’ve earned an A. You’ve written pages and pages. You’re the only person in this valley who can spell.

  It was one in the morning. Brenda had drunk too much wine. Want to spend the night? she said.

  —No, thanks. Grace was tall and narrow, with a calm, round face and hair in soft waves down the sides of it. Brenda longed to stroke that hair. Of course, she could trust Grace—one more student being given drink, though a student older than Brenda: Grace had turned out to be thirty-eight, ten years older. What if you wreck your car on the way home? Brenda said. They won’t just fire me; they’ll kill me.

  —I won’t, Grace said. I can’t spend the night. I wish I could. Something passed between them so potent that Brenda was scared, and she stood up. I’ll make coffee. She found cookies. They each had three or four. They grinned and hugged.

  —I’ll stay until the end of the term, Brenda said.

  Two nights later, Richie beat her up again. This time it was because she was uninformed about the war. She couldn’t even remember later what she’d said, something vague about a story she’d seen in the paper. He lectured and lectured and began pacing and yelling and demanding, and working himself up to the kind of frenzy, once more, that made it easy to take her by the shoulders and pinch hard, to thrust his face into hers, to demand again and again that she stop being the kind of woman who doesn’t care and doesn’t know. You could be better than that! he said. You’re not like Lee. He swung at her face and swung again.

  Brenda sank to the floor, sobbing, not caring that her face was wet with tears and snot, making no effort to clean herself. You’d better go, she said, when she could look up.

  —I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean to get like that. I’m taking out my rage at Nixon on you. It’s a rough world, lovey.

  —It’s late, she said. They had made love hours ago; it was rare for him to stay so long. He stood up, kissed the top of her head, and left her where she was. Brenda didn’t move for a long time. The phone rang and rang, and she didn’t pick it up. She hadn’t gone to see the baby, but she talked to Carol now and then. The baby was fine. Finally, the ringing stopped. More time passed, and then Brenda stood up and went to the bathroom to wash her face. She sat in her chair for another half hour.

  Then she sat down at the typewriter and wrote a letter to her chairman, who had looked at her with increasing sadness. I’m sorry to let you know in this abrupt way that a family emergency has called me back to New York and I must leave immediately. I deeply regret being unable to complete the semester. She wrote a note to her landlord, explaining that she would have no further need of the apartment and apologizing for leaving in it a television set that she would not be able to take with her. Thank you for everything, she finished.

  She began to pack. Imagining her mother observing her, she threw out everything in the refrigerator and wiped it out. She had saved cartons she’d brought in the fall, and she filled them with books. Working all night, she was able to pack her car and leave before daylight, leaving the note to the landlord in his mailbox. She ate breakfast in an all-night place and waited until the bank opened, when she emptied her checking account. On the way out of town she mailed the letter to her chairman. She drove a hundred miles north and put up in a motel for two days. Her bruises ached. The only useful thing she did was reorganize her suitcases so she had to open only one to get the clothes she’d need on a cross-country trip. She slept and cried.

  If she hadn’t fled, she’d have let Richie in again. She wanted to phone Grace and explain, but she didn’t want Grace to know the truth. She was appalled at herself, appalled at the person she was, less and less in control every year, less and less able to find a life. She had never spoiled anything this badly before, and she didn’t know how or why it had happened. All she could tell herself for sure was that she was against the war; everything somehow seemed to have flowed from that conviction—and her solitude—but she didn’t know why that should be so and didn’t regard it as an excuse. She blamed herself for everything.

  The motel had a television and she watched without seeing. The second night, she found in her glove compartment the map she’d used the previous summer, driving across the country. She brought it into her room and studied it, deciding to take the northern route east—Route 90—because she knew nothing about the places she’d drive through: Idaho, Montana, Minnesota. Making the decision was the first moment at which she felt able to choose to do something she wanted. The trip ahead of her would be a slow progress through ordinary interactions she would—somehow—not destroy: conversations with waitresses in which she would ask for coffee, conversations with motel keepers in which she would ask for a room, exchanges about the weather with men who worked in gas stations. She trusted herself with nothing more and wouldn’t need more. She considered driving on back roads instead of the highway, to make it take longer. She had no idea what to do when she reached New York—which she assumed must be where she was going: driving toward her father’s disapproval and her mother’s distress. But she would see the baby, Gabriel, for the first time. She had promised to fly east months ago. She had gone shopping and sent him a little red shirt and a pair of baby overalls: at least she had done that.

  She spent a couple of days in Seattle, having her ancient Volvo worked on. With her car in a garage, she walked around near her motel, looking at houses, people, and stores. She had no energy to try and find the center of the city, buy a guidebook, go to look at what was there to be looked at. She stayed where she was: she had found a garage and a motel, and at the end of a long walk were a couple of places to eat.

  Artie’s quest to be reinstated as a New York City teacher ended happily, abruptly, and mysteriously, when he received a form letter from the Board of Education instructing him to report to an office where he’d be required to complete certain papers updating his records. It looked like the letter that might be received by a teacher who was returning after taking time off, he explained to Harold on the phone.

  His lawyer had filed papers, written letters, and asked questions, and Artie would never know whether that had anything to do with what had happened. The letter had come the day before Carol gave birth to Gabriel. Wasn’t somebody getting born the day I lost the job in the first place? he said to Evelyn.

  —Sort of.

  —Do you see a pattern here? Artie was elated, giddy. He hadn’t called Brenda the day he found out about the job. He was uneasy with her—baffled by her decisions, her life—but the news of the baby made him forget everything else.

  Artie was assigned to take over the seventh-grade social studies and English classes of a teacher at a school in Queens who had just gone on maternity leave. When he’d imagined being reinstated, he’d pictured his old school and what he’d feel walking into that doorway with its neatly arranged bricks. His new school was in a postwar building of no particular style, and his arrival there—more paperwork—felt unrelated to the intense events of his dismissal. Nobody seemed to know about that. He was glad. He was simply going to work, but now, he pointed out to his friends and relatives, he no longer had to crawl around on the floor and handle strangers’ feet. A few days after he quit the job in the shoe store, he knew how strange—even educational—it had been. There were times when a foot revealed terrible secrets: strange wounds, malformations, obscene ankle tattoos. He knew something he hadn’t known before and knew it was something he could not explain, at least not quickly, at least not in a shout.

  With astonishment, he heard the way his pupils talked. He’d forgotten, now that his daughters were grown up. At first, these kids seemed different—more knowing, more cynical, older. Then they didn’t. He could still make them laugh by sternly telling them to do something they couldn’t possibly do: Girls in the first row, please turn yourselves into butterflies. He still argued with them. Evelyn told him to be careful, for heaven�
��s sake, but Artie had never known how to be careful. He loved the children more than he had before—or more simply than before, as he loved Gabriel more simply than he loved Carol and Brenda: he wanted less.

  It tickled him that Brenda had become a teacher because as a girl, she’d insisted there was nothing she’d hate more. All through the spring, he missed Brenda and imagined companionable conversations about their shared profession. How different could their work be? He wondered if he could advise her about problems she faced and wondered what she’d think of his classroom. Brenda had been remote and terse all year, but he wanted to be friends with her; he’d always known that she understood and approved of him, even though they still had fights. Now they were colleagues. One night late in April he woke up thinking about a problem in his third-period class. Artie had developed insomnia in his fifties, a restlessness that made him wander the apartment, staring out of dark windows, picking up books and magazines and putting them down again. At present, he was troubled about two girls in one of his classes. They were smart, and he wanted to reach them in something like the same way he had wanted to reach Brenda. They passed notes and glanced at him defiantly if they saw him looking at them; they whispered in class. They claimed to be in favor of the war and frequently raised their hands to ask how any patriotic person could fail to support the fight against communism in Southeast Asia. And just this morning, one of them had said, But maybe you don’t think communism is so bad, Mr. Saltzman? and he felt himself blush as he looked at her.

  —I’m asking you to find Vietnam on a map, that’s all, he said. In his new school, at least, the maps were more up-to-date than in the school he used to work in—his real school, he called it to himself.

  Maybe Brenda would have helpful ideas. It was not the middle of the night in California, only the evening. He liked having an excuse to phone her. He dialed her number and let the phone ring. No answer. He wondered where she might be on a weekday evening.

  The next night he tried Brenda again, but again she was not home. The next day was Saturday, and as soon as it was late enough in the morning to call California, he tried Brenda’s number again. When did we last speak to Brenda? he asked Evelyn, when again there was no answer.

  —Two weeks ago.

  —I’ve been trying to call her and she’s never home.

  —When did you try to call her? Why didn’t you tell me? Evelyn was straightening up after lunch.

  —I didn’t want to worry you.

  She turned from the refrigerator, leaving the door ajar, the mayonnaise in her hand. What are you protecting me from? I have such a good life I’ve never learned how to worry?

  —You do have a good life, he said.

  —I do. I have a good job and a grandson, but I wish Brenda was closer to home.

  —And a good husband. Who can still do it in bed. Who even has a job you don’t have to be ashamed of.

  —Artie, I was never ashamed. She went to the phone, and he saw that she knew Brenda’s number by heart. Nobody home, she said. It’s Saturday. She’s running errands, or maybe she’s doing something nice.

  —Or getting arrested, he said. Marching against the war.

  —Not getting arrested, I hope. We’ll try later.

  She tried every hour. She’d turn away from the phone each time, saying, Look, I know this is silly. She could have gone on a trip. She’s a grown woman. She’s older than Carol, and I don’t worry if I don’t know where Carol is.

  —You know where Carol is. She’s at home, she’s at work, she’s at the grocery store. Or the shul.

  Evelyn didn’t answer. She was compulsively cleaning. It’s not that, she said. If I couldn’t reach Carol, there are ten people I could call who might know where she is—her mother-in-law, her friends. If I can’t reach Brenda, there isn’t anybody in the world I can call. What is wrong with her, that there’s nobody I can call?

  A day and a half later—Evelyn was speechless with fear by now, and Artie was considering calling the cops in Brenda’s town to report a missing person—the phone was answered. Artie, watching, saw Evelyn’s startled face. This is Evelyn Saltzman, she said in her work voice. I’m trying to reach my daughter Brenda.

  Artie ran to the bedroom phone. She took off in the middle of the night, a man’s voice was saying. I don’t know where she went. And I don’t know what kind of fishy stuff was going on in this apartment. Have you been calling all day? I kept hearing the ringing. It’s an adjoining apartment—I hear everything.

  —I’m her mother, Evelyn said. Can’t you tell me more? Is her car there?

  —Her car is gone, her things are mostly gone, the rent is paid. But she didn’t give me notice, she didn’t turn off the electricity or the phone. I don’t know what’s going on, and whatever it is, I don’t want to be mixed up in it. Men showing up at all hours! Look, I don’t know what kind of people you are, but that’s not what I expected, renting to a teacher. Now he was shouting.

  —I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Evelyn said, and hung up. Artie ran back into the living room. You should have got his name! You should have got his number!

  —Why didn’t you? You were on the phone!

  —I don’t know. I couldn’t talk.

  —At least we know now she’s not lying there dead.

  —Is that what you thought? he said.

  She sat down, and her voice was weak. Artie, where could she be? Why doesn’t she call us?

  —She’s all right. She’ll call.

  —You don’t think she’s called Carol?

  He called Carol, who had heard nothing. She listened to his account of each call. I’m sure she’s all right, she said.

  —Does she talk to you? he asked Carol.

  —Not much. All I know is what she thinks of the war. She’s probably protesting somewhere. Or she got arrested. Dad, do you think she’s in jail?

  —She’d have called us, he said. He didn’t know how he’d get through the hours. How’s the baby?

  —He’s fine. He turned over from his back to his front—but I told you that.

  —Did he do it again?

  —Only once.

  With a pile of change next to the phone, Brenda dialed her parents’ number on her second night in Seattle, from a booth outside a pancake house she’d walked to. Her car was still in the shop. She had not yet decided what to tell Artie and Evelyn. They’d realize she was calling from a pay phone because the operator would break in after three minutes and ask for more money, but she might just say she had gone out to eat and wanted to phone before the time difference made it too late, which was true.

  But Evelyn burst into tears when Brenda said hi, and now she was sobbing and calling, Artie! Artie!

  —What is it, Ma? Ma? Is the baby all right? Are you okay? Brenda understood that she should have called sooner. There was some kind of emergency and she didn’t know about it. At last, it became clear that she was the emergency. Now her mother sounded angry, and her father, even angrier, picked up the phone in the other room.

  —Don’t you have the slightest feeling for anyone except yourself?

  —Of course I do.

  He’d taken over the conversation. So where are you, may I ask? Your landlord says you left.

  —My landlord! What right did you have to call my landlord?

  —I didn’t call your landlord. He was in the apartment when your mother called.

  —Well, he shouldn’t have answered. What did he tell you? Behind her was the driveway from the restaurant parking lot. Each time someone drove out, the noise of the motor made it hard to hear her father’s voice. The operator asked for more money, and Brenda was tempted to pretend she had none, but she threw in some more change: it was good to hear his voice.

  Now he was shouting about men. What had the landlord said? What did he know?

  —That’s simply not true, she said. I have friends, sure, and sometimes somebody came over.

  —That’s not what he seems to think. Where are you?

 
—I’m in Seattle. I’m coming home. You won’t hear from me for a while because it’s hard to phone when I’m traveling.

  —Seattle? What are you doing in Seattle? Don’t you have a job?

  —It ended. You don’t have to shout, Dad, I can hear you.

  —I’m not shouting, he shouted. What do you mean it ended? They have summer vacation in April? What kind of a college is this? What kind of a lousy unaccredited joint did you end up in?

  Again, she had to put in more money. It’s a state junior college. You know this. Look, they fired me.

  —They fired you? he said, and she heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath. For what? Because you’re against the war? Don’t tell me you’re another one like me—but why didn’t you tell me? You think I haven’t been through this?

  She was on the edge of tears. If only she were a political martyr. She knew, in a way, she was—they’d been against her since her outburst at the poetry reading. She had told her parents that story, and her father had enjoyed it, while her mother found it frightening. Won’t the dean be angry with you? she’d asked.

  But she was as much to blame for losing her job as the college. She shouldn’t have had the Christmas party at her house. She shouldn’t have served beer and let the kids smoke pot. She’d played into their hands, and that was what had angered Richie. More than for anything, she blamed herself for Richie.

  —I don’t have any more change, she said, which was not true. Tell me about the baby.

  They told her about the baby. The baby was perfect. I’ll call again, she said, and hung up. Distracted, she put the remaining coins into her pocket and looked around for her car, then remembered she had to walk back to the motel. It took an hour. When she got back, she wished she had brought something with her, some sweet food to eat before turning out the light.

  Brenda called her parents again in Chicago. She didn’t want more details about her landlord’s report—or that of anyone else in town he might have spoken to. She could never tell her parents the whole story. But it pleased her that they had worried. She’d forgotten that anyone, anywhere might be thinking of her, loving and worrying. And she was pleased that her father had been ready to welcome her to the club: people who’d lost jobs because they were true to their beliefs. This time she planned what she’d say before she called, and filled the time with an account of what she’d seen and where she’d been. Her parents had traveled little and were impressed with stories of stopping at the side of a river amid mountains in Idaho, of crossing the Mississippi.