Susan considered his earnest face and tried not to see a student asking permission to leave the room.
“I’ll be fine alone,” she said.
But after five minutes, she realized she didn’t want to be alone. So she pulled out the letter to Hilary.
“Sorry this has been so fragmented. Have decided to postpone menopause for a while. I’m no longer a hoary witch. I know this will offend your feminist sensibilities, but this man makes me feel so alive.” Susan took frequent intermissions at the sink and the toilet. It became harder and harder to continue. However, she needed to stay awake, away from the nightmares. She had to sort it out now. She fought off the drowsiness. If only Hilary could understand. If only she could convince Hilary.…
“Mohammed makes me feel like I have a right to be young.” Hilary would have to agree that she shouldn’t be ageist. And anyway, what is young? Certainly not someone who has moved all around North Africa since he was thirteen working for different uncles and grandfathers. Not someone who has enough determination to get an American scholarship. Not someone gentle enough to sit up the entire night with me. What is old? Susan could barely keep awake.
She imagined or saw or dreamed, Hilary, lotus position in her jeans on a conveyor belt. Singing spirituals to the sisters in the factory. Giving the women a chance to rest while she’s on the assembly line. Hilary reaches over and hugs Chrissie Moore. Gives Emma Dickson a male doll for the baby. Hands Maud the address of a safe abortionist. She raises her hands and conducts them in hymns of consciousness. She is approching Susan. “All those who see the light step forward,” she sings, “join me on the Kotex belt.”
“Come on, Susan, swim. Catch me. Come on, further out. Don’t you have waves in California? Come on, just to the other side of the castle. Come on. Don’t give up. Don’t give up.”
She woke up exhausted; vomited; shat; fell back into the race. Different this time. The wind moved her. She never dreamed she would make it to the Olympics. Crowds were cheering. She thought they were cheering. She ran faster, but she still couldn’t hear. She couldn’t recognize the faces of the spectators now: Hilary, Mother, Mohammed, Guy, her little brother and a very young, unfamiliar boy were all waiting on the other side of the tape. Panic gripped her heart. Whom was she running against? Where was she running to? She could hardly breathe. What were they yelling? To go a different way? To speed up? To take longer strides? Where were the other runners? Maybe close behind. She would not turn around. Instead she kept her eyes ahead, looking past the spectators, looking beyond their mute faces, oblivious to everything except the power in her own legs. And the silence.
Her legs ached. Everything ached when she awoke. But she no longer felt nauseated or cramped. Nothing left to vomit or shit. She was still tired, but so much better. Warm winds gathered outside, lapping the sidewalk with waves, splashing the flowers in and out of the open window.
Mohammed appeared out of nowhere with some boiled rice. He said she would be all right. His cousin, the doctor, said it was just the forty-eight hour tourist tummy. She would be all right.
Yes, she nodded, gobbling the rice with surprising appetite. She said she felt better already.
He put his arm around her shoulder and together they watched the still sleeping village. Two tourists, wearing irridescent orange backpacks, climbed the hotel steps. The maid wiped mucky circles with her rag. Otherwise, the streets were quiet. Wheelbarrows leaned against the scala. The pier was vacant of fishermen and sardine chefs. Ships bobbed lazily in the now crowded harbor. She kissed Mohammed and they lay back on the bed together.
Susan had been closed so long that she was afraid she was locked. But the slopes of his body smoothed her hands. The hard muscles of his calves gripped her thighs. His arms roped around her back. He hardened against her stomach and she allowed herself to want. They filled the bed with relief, joy, hunger, surprise. She had lied to herself, by herself, so long. Afterwards, he slept like he had not allowed himself to do during her illness. Susan lay awake, soothed by that even breathing.
And she played with a splinter of fear. Was this real? How long could it last? Would he make the rest of the trip with her? What would her mother say about all this weight she had lost? Would Hilary think she was a whore? “Whore!” “Hure!” “Putain!” Silence. She heard nothing. But she wasn’t listening for the voices anymore. Or for the echoes. She heard nothing. Closing her eyes, she waited peacefully for the aroma of coffee and the crocketing of wheelbarrows from the street below.
Aunt Victoria
My Aunt Victoria came back from Moscow tonight. She is my favorite aunt, of all my mom’s sisters, even though I have hardly ever seen her during the fifteen years of my life.
“Victoria is a dancer before and after everything else,” my mother was explaining to my father, who doesn’t like dancing, on the highway to JFK Airport. It was just mom and dad and me in the car because we knew Aunt Victoria would be tired after flying for so long. My mom was in a bad mood because she had just had a terrible fight with my sister Marie who had to stay home and babysit the younger kids.
“How come she gets to go?” Marie yelled, meaning me.
“Because she actually takes the time to write to your aunt,” mom said.
Marie doesn’t see much use in writing anything. She’s seventeen and engaged to Kevin Cagney. So she called me a prima donna, and thinking I wouldn’t know what it meant, she also called me, “teacher’s pet.” Of course I told her she was just jealous. Then my mom told me to keep still or I wouldn’t get to go either.
My dad hates the ride to JFK. “What does being a dancer got to do with us turning our lives upside down when she comes?” he wanted to know.
“She’s an artist,” said my mom. “She needs the right conditions. She would go crazy trying to find her way on the airport bus.”
“She’s crazy altogether,” he said. “She’s too nervous to look into your eyes when she talks. And she’s always yapping about London or Paris or some goddamned place you never heard of. What’s she coming home for anyway?”
I could have answered them that. I just got a letter from her last week. She always writes on blue vellum with black ink.
But my mom was talking already. “Oh, dear, when Victoria called, it was such a garble. She said she just wanted to see us all. She said that we, meaning the two of us, would go up to Manhattan to see a ballet together.”
“Swell,” he said. “We’re the limousine so Ms. Big Shot can do her business. Last time she dropped by America, she didn’t even fucking bother to call.”
“She was just in Washington for one benefit performance,” mom said. “And will you please watch your language.”
“Listen, the more Susie Q. in the back seat there knows, the less likely she’ll grow into.…”
“She’s shy,” I said, and I was going to tell him how much Aunt Victoria missed us, too, but my mom told me to be quiet and not to interrupt my father.
When we saw Aunt Victoria at the airport, she didn’t look very shy or lonely. She looked like an empress. Her hair was piled high with silver combs. She was wearing a red velvet skirt and a beautiful black shawl with flowers on it. She talked all the way home in the car and after dinner she gave everybody presents. She brought mom and dad a samovar and Marie a painted box and I’m really excited because she brought me a shawl just like hers—black with flowers. When mom sent us all to bed, dad seemed happier. He was drinking vodka and listening to Aunt Victoria’s funny stories about Russian toilets.
I can still hear them laughing from the living room. Mom said it was all right to sit up late and write, if I didn’t tell my sister Marie. And she told me we should put away the shawl for a couple of years. She said it was a little too dark for someone only fifteen years old.
IX
Aerogramme
Dear Susan,
Drizzling here. I’m approaching that London dilemma of whether to risk the fumes of my gas fire or bear the cold a while longer. God, I envy y
our California respite. We’ve all missed you terribly these last months.
Even Pia misses Susan, but that’s more than she’d admit to me. Of course, Pia is what Susan wants me to write about. How is Pia? Why hasn’t Pia sent more than a postcard? Listen, none of us counted on much more from Pia. Once we had hoped she would go back to the States with Susan. At least for a time. For her own sake. Susan and the sun would have kept her much warmer than the Dutch gin.
I was delighted when they got together. Thought it would be good therapy for Pia and it might purge Susan of some innocence. Every woman I know who’s had a lesbian affair in London has been with our Pia. For Susan, though, it turned out to be much more than an affair. It was Susan’s turn. Or mine, but I decided a long time ago that I’m basically asexual. Anyway, I had seen their affair coming for a while. Even had something to do with it. A few initial phone calls, if you know what I mean. And I did bring Susan to Sara’s wedding, which is the night she first slept with Pia.
Sara’s wedding was Mardi Gras for sure. The last fling. Touches of celebrity. Made Londoner’s Diary because Sara was “The West End Feminist.” The newspapers weren’t the only place Sara was panned for “giving in and getting married.” Anyway, we all wore black—all her friends—completely without collusion. Well, Pia always wore black. But that night everyone did. Even Susan, who was forever tented in those North African reds and oranges. She hung up her Goulimime beads for a long silver chain. Sara, in her flowered Liberty cotton, was too pissed on Daddy’s champagne to notice the mourning tones when we all paraded in at ten p.m. She didn’t notice Pia’s strained charm turn to wild dancing turn to intimate chat about the scars of Catholic daughterhood with Susan.
Was I the only one who knew that Susan had been in love with Pia for nine months, ever since Susan came to our Women’s Socialist Literature Collective?
Looks like we have a nibble for the book. Virago says they can do a run of 7,000 paperback. Your photos are fine. I’m actually getting off on being a literary agent. I’d give up the PR job altogether if I could find enough feminist clients.
Our collective was more than an editorial group. For some of us, it was Bloomsbury. For Sara, it was a revolutionary citoyenne brigade. For Pia, it was a CP lit caucus, descended from the thirties. Like so many of the progressive groups in London now, it was half North American. Why did we stay in Britain when the pound was falling, the postboxes were being blown up, and everyone was going on strike? Well, because a lot of us had studied English literature. We figured if we wanted to write literature, we had to be in England. Un peu naïve, you might say, but that idealism was the very best part of all of us.
It’s odd that Susan, despite all her other quixotic ideas, never had any illusions about being “a writer.” She had come to London as a reporter. As a photographer and journalist. She said she would take pictures and do reviews for us, but forget this creative writing business. Superbly realistic, she seemed, and very young. The brightest one of us, for sure. My five years here haven’t cured me of what my British mates call “individualism.” I still place friends in some high school yearbook. “Most Likely to Succeed.” That was Susan, because of all of us, she knew what she wanted to succeed at. Pia qualified as “Most Popular” and, as I gradually understood, also “Most Innocent.”
Why do I keep coming back to Pia? Perhaps because her vulnerability brings out the mother in everyone. As Moira says, “feminism stimulates lactation.” Of course, one look at Pia and most mothers would run the other way with their arms locked across their breasts. She is almost frighteningly gorgeous with that bobbed, hennaed hair, those antique silk blouses and Hepburn slacks. She usually wears funky pumps or black espadrilles and a coke spoon on a silver chain around her neck. Women in the collective were always teasing about the sexism in her dress.
“What do you mean?” Pia declared after one meeting. “I’m the biggest raving dyke here.”
“But you still dress like some man’s fantasy,” Susan said.
“Why some man’s?”
Susan blushed. She really was young sometimes, or maybe just honest.
“And who are you geared up to be?” asked Pia. “Jill Johnston’s fantasy in your loose sweaters and always jeans? That’s an image, too, you know. Why the hell do you bind your hair in that leather noose? You look like some vegetarian nun.”
Susan let it pass, partially because she was beginning to be seduced and partially because Susan always respected people with reasons who had thought out their positions. They disagreed desperately on Doris Lessing that night. Pia said Lessing was too worthy, too moral. Now, her idea of an expatriate was Anaïs Nin. Susan charged Pia with having a patriarchal aesthetic and they had a terrible fight.
Great to hear you’re doing so well in San Francisco. How’s the job? Does California feel any different now that you’re an editor? Are you being smothered by good old Yankee provincialism? We were all over at Pia’s last night comparing letters from you, our prodigal sister. We all miss you a lot.
On the night of Sara’s wedding, I had arranged to stay over with a friend—just in case Susan wanted the flat to herself, just in case anything happened with her and Pia. At midnight, they were drinking Sara’s daddy’s champagne from the same glass and talking about a Holly Near album. A half hour later, they were missing from the party.
The next afternoon, Susan told me the story. I was quite proud of Susan for taking the initiative. After hearing the first side of the album and half of the second Pia said, “Not as hokey as I expected. I like it.”
“And I like you,” said Susan, taking her hand.
“This isn’t going to work out, honey,” Pia told her. “It never works out with straight women. I’m just intermission.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Susan said the sex was wonderful, a real turn-on. For me, it’s pretty much an aesthetic appreciation. I’ve always thought women’s bodies were more beautiful. I fell in love with Isadora Duncan when I was twelve and with Vanessa Redgrave ten years later. Evidently, however, Pia’s initiation wasn’t as delicate as I had imagined.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Pia said. “Straight women always think they’ve got to come down on you the first time.”
“Pia, this is wonderful.”
“Yeah, doll, it’s OK for me, too.”
Remember Susan had wanted to be with her for almost a year.
“Pia, I think I’m in love.”
“Don’t say that.”
That meeting at Pia’s was the first time we all got together since you left. Everyone has been frantically chasing around on this Agee-Hosenball CIA stuff. If the Home Office deports them, I’m leaving. I may not have much choice. They’re searching peoples’ flats. Someone took Jenny’s address book from her car seat. The government is tightening ass everywhere. It’s scary. With the pound this far down, people are going frantic politically—turning Tory or Commie. More Tory.
Pia and Susan had always gone to the same meetings, parties and marches. Now they would be going together. Their debut was Jenny’s Ph.D. celebration. Jenny had broken off with Pia three months before. Pia had seriously thought about marrying Jenny and following her off to Kenya. Now Jenny was going to Lake Rudolf on her own. Pia hadn’t told her about Susan yet and she was clearly agitated as we rode the cab from Holloway to Lexham Gardens. Susan held her hand and chatted with me happily.
Amazing how unself-conscious Susan was. Their affair scared Pia, I know. Too easy, she thought. Susan didn’t know her well enough yet, Pia told me. Or maybe Susan couldn’t find anyone else. Pia was accustomed to, and probably enjoyed, breaking down the tensions of shy, frightened or coy straight women. And here sat Susan, publicly—almost relentlessly—holding her hand.
You could feel the approval when they walked into the room. Pia’s black silk elegance was accented by Susan’s stunning cinnamon overalls. Jenny embraced them both and led them over to the wine table where Pia downed a bottle of Graves Burgun
dy during a fifteen minute conversation about clitoridectomies among the Masai.
Pia asked Susan if she’d like to bop. Susan, still on her first glass of wine, said she was a klutz. But soon they were swinging, Pia’s slacks flouncing, to Bill Haley and his Comets. Pia sashayed into the drapes and managed to bring the rod down on their heads. Of course Susan was hurt, too, but she was considerably more sober.
Pia spent the rest of the evening lying in Susan’s lap, eating pâté, and chatting to the visitors. She hadn’t looked that relaxed in a year.
Pia has been doing some work for the Guardian arts section. Fringe theatre reviews and a couple of interviews. She says you can do more in the union if you’re working for a mainstream paper. You must have had some impact on her, you little bourgeois reformer.
They were really good for each other. It made me happy just to have breakfast with them in the morning. Studious, practical Susan became almost frivolous. Pia felt more secure than she had in ages.
Together they worked closely on the abortion campaign, the feminist aesthetics conference, the union. Alistair called them “the Bobbsey Twins” which Susan hated because it reminded Pia they were both American.
“Even if you were Canadian, it wouldn’t be so bad,” Pia told her. “But it’s like waking up with a mirror sometimes. You’re everything I tried to escape—broad American accent, orthodontic straight teeth, rampant freckles.”
Pia had worked damn hard at getting away from West Hollywood High. She took the first train to Bennington and couldn’t get out of the States fast enough when she got that offer from The Hogarth Press.
“I knew I would never make it as an all-American girl,” she told Susan. “I found the culture so stifling. I wasn’t wholesome enough.”
“And I’m Miss USA?” said Susan.
“You’re sweet enough.”
“I suppose I’d be more interesting if I had a heroin habit or was into bondage.”
“I suppose you would.”
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