“I love you. Isn’t that enough?”
“Maybe too much,” frowned Pia. “Don’t talk like that.”
You asked about Shana in the last letter. She’s the artist whom Pia has been seeing. They’re still “together,” if that’s the word. It’s been three months now. Perhaps they’ve stuck it out because Shana’s always away. She’s not very good to Pia. She sees other people, including Jenny, who still hasn’t split for Lake Rudolf. Pia has been drinking more lately, expensive Dutch gin that Shana brings back duty-free from her tours. She’s getting thinner, smoking more. I don’t want to guilt trip you or anything. You made the right choice in going back to the States. But you were so good for her.
Actually, I had known Pia two years before Susan phoned me from Victoria Station, said she was a friend of my sister’s, and asked if she could spend the night on my couch. She wound up staying years. Yes, I was quite in the middle of their relationship in a lot of ways. Mother to Pia, confidante to Susan. Interesting, I thought I knew Pia until Susan told me about their conversation on fantasies.
“So if I’m Miss USA,” said Susan, “who are you? Don Juan in Hell?”
“No, I hate Shaw, too snide,” said Pia.
“Not Mr. Darcy?”
“No, not Mr. Darcy.”
“Well, it’s got to be romantic,” said Susan.
“Oh, definitely romantic,” said Pia as she rolled over and played with Susan’s long curls. “How would you feel about Peter Pan?”
I told Susan, later, that she made a good Wendy, certainly a much better one than I. I never had Susan’s capacity for involvement. Sure, I admit I was in love with both of them and scared to death of it. Like my Aunty Jane, who’s a smalltime dance impressario in Brooklyn, I’m more given to secondhand adventures. Obviously both Susan and Pia understood that.
Spare Rib wants to excerpt your essay for their January issue. They can’t pay, of course. And they all ask about you.
That Spare Rib party was probably the beginning of the end for Susan and Pia. It was like an anniversary of the women’s movement in London. Everyone was there. Sara wore black this time, one of those sensuous voile blouses with satin slacks. Spectacular. This was the first time we’d all been together since her wedding.
Funny, five years ago we were all novices and now we were professional feminists. Leah ran the Women’s Studies Centre at Warwick. Kate had started Scottish Women’s Aid. Moira, after an outrageous three year affair with Pia, had married a rabbi and founded a literacy project for women in Slough. Susan had been offered this magazine job in San Francisco.
Susan was alternately jubilant and tormented about the job. I know she would have stayed in London if Pia had asked. But Pia was dancing with everybody else that night.
I’m still toying with the idea of going back to the States, myself. You’re a good example for me. I do miss it. I miss people with the same sense of humor, whose accents I understand the first time around. I’m tired of never having enough meat and of getting the flu twice every winter. I sometimes even miss my mother. But if I left England, I would miss the Half Moon Theatre, the King’s Head Pub, the terrible jokes in Private Eye. How could I leave my friends here?
They went to Brighton to settle their future. Whitsun at Bobbie’s. I thought it was a bad idea because Bobbie can be overbearing and, besides, she’s been in love with Pia for years. But she was gracious, apparently. Served them Asti Spumanti in bed. And except for Sunday brunch, when she went into a tirade about the politics of semiotics, Bobbie stayed in the background.
They spent the weekend sleeping late and noshing at those little cafes on the waterfront. Susan said they had never been that close. She would stay awake at night, just for the sense of Pia’s arms around her. She didn’t say she loved Pia. She hadn’t said that in months. She thought Pia might say it now. All Pia really had to say was “Stay.”
She didn’t. On Sunday night, during their second bottle of Pouilly Fuisse. Susan said she had to decide about whether she would go to San Francisco.
“Look,” said Pia. “I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s life.”
“But loving someone is a responsibility.”
“Susan, I don’t like being pushed.”
“Who’s pushing?”
“You are, damn it. You always are. By being too kind. Too loving. You’re a good person, Susan.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
Pia always got angry when she felt guilty and she shouted back now, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that. It’s not very interesting.”
Are you still thinking about coming back for the summer? Moira says she can get a cottage at the Lakes for a week, or something at the Yorkshire Downs. Pia was glad to hear you were coming.
They were together for Susan’s last night in London. The next morning, Susan almost missed her plane because Pia couldn’t find her briefcase. She bumped her head as we all jumped in the taxi to go to the West London Air Terminal. That seemed to break the tension and we laughed and exchanged last minute messages to friends in the States.
“The book?” said Susan. “My copy of the manuscript, what did you do with it, Pia?”
“I don’t have it. I thought Moira was supposed to get it to you.”
“So what’s this?” said Susan. “The collective unconsciousness?”
Pia leaned into Susan’s arms, laughing and promising to post it to her the next day. It was the first time I had ever heard her volunteer to do clerical labor. As a matter of fact, I wound up doing it myself, a week later.
The morning was grey. Buses at King’s Cross belched filth. The taxis clogged up Regent Street. Tourists trudged around Picadilly Circus with hundreds of pigeons.
Susan said, “I’ve never understood what all the people saw in Picadilly Circus.”
“The Bovril sign, of course,” said Pia. “Too bad the stuff tastes so foul, but the sign is superb. Have you seen it in the Lowry painting?”
“I haven’t even seen it on top of that building before,” admitted Susan.
“Listen honey,” said Pia, “come to London sometime and I’ll show you around.”
Susan insisted that Pia and I stay in the taxi because we were both late for work. There was some joke at the end, some sardonic comment of Pia’s. I don’t remember anything except the laughing and the kissing and Susan loping off to the ticket counter under her khaki rucksack like a goddamned Girl Scout.
Pia began sobbing immediately. By the time we hit Earl’s Court, it was definitely valium hour.
The cabbie, who looked like he had coped with a lot of avant garde dramas, turned and said feebly, “It’s all right, luv, she’ll come back. They always do.”
“No they don’t,” Pia shot back. “They always grow up.”
So anyway, Susan, let me know when your schedule is firm. I’ll meet you. Actually, you should let Pia know your plans, too. I’m not trying to choreograph anything, but why don’t you just drop her a postcard? All the sisters miss you. Love, Carol.
One of Them
“They’ve taken over Women’s Studies,” said the History Professor.
“They certainly make my wedding ring feel heavy,” said the Associate Dean of Students.
“Always acting ‘more feminist than thou,’” said the Poet-In-Residence.
Cornelia regarded her friends and realized this was a party of well-known feminists. Scholars who had taken risks for their politics. Some who always had a “gut feeling” for feminism. Women who had found Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Who wrote books about the tyranny of motherhood. And all of them “struggling” on the home front, too, with their bullheaded men. Almost all of them.
Naturally the conversation turned to lesbians. Cornelia understood why. The woman wearing the fedora had walked out into the garden. Cornelia listened to their complaints and imagined the garden as some sort of wild game refuge.
“They judge your feminism on your bed partner,” said Barbara.
“W
ho does that?” asked Cornelia.
“Andrea Dworkin,” interrupted Rose angrily, “says heterosexual sex is murder.”
“It’s their attitude that bothers me,” shot Kim. “Like the aggressiveness of their clothes.”
Cornelia knew these women well. Knew they appreciated irony. Self-irony. “There’s a uniform?” she smiled.
Barbara looked past her, responding to Kim. “And the almost bragging display of affection.” She stabbed a strawberry and grape together with her toothpick.
“I heard of a woman at Smith,” whispered Rose, “who slept her way to the top of her department and it didn’t have anything to do with phallic power.”
“So lesbians are running the American university system?” asked Cornelia, still betting on humor. She tried to ignore the migraine starting behind her left eye.
Mariette considered Cornelia cautiously, obviously worrying her friend would do something rash. Even breathing too deeply in your year of tenure could be rash.
“Cornelia,” said Kim, “you can’t deny that in some places it’s easier to be ‘woman-identified,’ as they so self-righteously put it.”
“Stop it,” said Mariette. “Stop bickering about who’s more oppressed.”
“They’re the ones,” said Barbara, filling everyone’s wine glass, “who brand you with your personal life.”
“But think of all the lesbians who are still in the closet,” said Cornelia, feeling her body temperature rise ten degrees, “who are afraid to lose their jobs.”
“At our school?” laughed Rose. “At good old Progressive U?”
“The real stigma,” said Barbara, “is the nepotism rule. Do you know how hard it is to be married to someone in the same field?”
“Yes,” Kim began, “when I was at Hopkins.…”
Cornelia looked closely at the faces of her friends, her colleagues, her sisters and wondered how well she knew them, despite all the committee meetings and potlucks and commiserating drinks. Sometimes she felt like a hypocrite for not coming out to them. Other times she was sure they all knew. But for five years she had been silent. (“Self-protective,” she called it. “Paranoid,” charged Ruth. “Reserved,” said Karen. “Sensible,” said Mariette, who was now monitoring her every breath.)
“They just won’t let you be a feminist,” said Rose. “Heterophobia, I call it. Unless you wear a flannel shirt and…” she paused, not wanting to sound too bizarre, “handcuffs or something.…”
Cornelia cleared her throat.
Mariette watched fearfully.
“You just don’t understand,” Cornelia began.
“Yes,” interrupted Mariette, desperate to swerve her friend from self-destruction. “That’s like calling blacks ‘racists.’”
Cornelia could hear her own fear in Mariette’s voice. And this woke her to the absurdity of hiding political choice from her allies.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I am a lesbian.” Cornelia’s eyes met Barbara’s for a moment before her friend became absorbed by a speck in her wine glass. “I am one of those dyke feminists and I haven’t kept you from anything.” She saw Rose inch away toward the wall. “If I had so much power, I would have come out years ago.” She noticed the quavering in her voice and the shaking of her glass, which she set on the table. Looking around, she found Mariette was the only one looking at her.
“I think what Cornelia’s done is very brave,” said Mariette.
“Oh, yes,” said Rose. “I know how you feel. Remember when I lived with that heroin addict for a while? The stigma, I understand stigma.”
“And discreet,” said Barbara. “We’ve known you for four, five years! It’s a real tribute to your social skills.”
“How about a real indictment of social prejudice,” said Mariette bitterly.
“Of course, in the larger academy,” said Rose. “But among us, well, I’m sure we all would have, well, sympathized.”
Cornelia’s migraine had reached her right eyebrow.
The garden doors opened, admitting the hatted woman.
“I mean,” said Kim, lowering her voice, “it’s not like you’re really one of them.”
X
Feel No Evil
Susan was reading Sheila Rowbotham. She was always reading while she waited and waiting to read while she wasn’t. She got this from her mother who also read all the time. Not Sheila Rowbotham, but junk stuff like Anya Seaton, Frances Parkinson Keyes and Taylor Caldwell. Authors they displayed in the window of the American Opinion Library, for god’s sake. It was like food, Susan sometimes thought, like her snobbishness about Mother’s food. Whenever she visited that tiny, hot apartment, her mother fed her pork chops and fried potatoes with a big, healthy chunk of corn bread for dessert. Then Susan would spend the next two weeks cleaning herself with fruit and bran, confident that she would be a better person after a good dose of brewer’s yeast.
Because she was reading, Elizabeth saw Susan before Susan saw her. Susan had arrived early to find a place by the window, a post, but now it was Elizabeth who was on guard.
Why had they picked the Skylight Room? Because the convex mirrors and heated hors d’oeuvres were so much not their milieu that they could regard the meeting as a vignette? Because they might fulfill their fantasies of chucking each other down twenty-four stories?
Susan recalled what Joan Didion had said about people with self-respect: “They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties.…”
Susan had been away from Toronto for three years. Still, she was startled by the changes in Elizabeth. Her old friend looked harder, tenser, stonier, also younger. She wore the same innocent face, resolutely, painfully innocent. Sister Sans Charity.
Elizabeth’s voice sounded familiar. “On second thought,” she said, “I don’t think it was such a good idea to meet. But I guess we can make this brief.”
Susan nodded.
She noticed that Elizabeth was wearing that terrible, cheap Eaton’s basement blouse with the blue and green ethereal flora. She must have remembered how much Susan hated the blouse. And those grey cords. Sloppiness still seemed a moral imperative of the women’s movement in North America. Elizabeth sat on the edge of the booth and sloughed off her peacoat.
It was Susan’s turn. Susan’s turn to explain why she had phoned after all this time abroad, to explain just what she wanted.
“We were friends for a long time,” Susan began, “you and Mike and Guy and I. We were like family. In fact, knowing my family, you were closer.” Susan was embarrassed by the pleading in her voice, the obsequiousness. “We shared so much together.”
Elizabeth remained silent.
“If you and Mike hadn’t been sponsoring draft resisters,” she said, gratefully, remembering the loneliness of those first days in Canada, “I don’t know what Guy and I would have done.”
“Probably divorced a lot sooner.”
Susan wasn’t going to forfeit their friendship to cheap pot shots. If it was going to end, it would have to be in a mighty explosion right here at this Upper Canadian cocktail lounge.
“Elizabeth, you were very important to me. You introduced me to all those women’s books. We spent so many evenings drinking. We shared so much.”
“Including Mike.”
Susan noticed that she said, “including Mike,” instead of “including my husband.” Elizabeth never used the word “husband,” as if they had got unmarried. She always introduced Mike as “the man I live with.” She had changed her name back to Moreau (probably claiming to be Quebeçoise as well as single). But what did she know of being alone? Sometimes Susan hated married feminists, women for whom equal wages was a question of ethics rather than practicality, for whom independence was only a psychological state. And with Mike’s good salary as a primatology professor, Elizabeth’s survival was guaranteed.
“Yes, we all hurt each other a lot,” Su
san said.
“Hold on, you were the one.…”
“I was only one of the ones. You knew all along that Mike and I were fucking. You just never let on. You used our guilt against both of us.”
“I did not,” said Elizabeth. “I didn’t know until the day you left for England.”
“And it came to you in a blinding flash of light?”
“More like a blinding rage.” Elizabeth smiled in spite of herself. “Tell me how you could have done it? How could you have pretended to be my friend—even giving me advice about my marriage—when you were sleeping with Mike?”
“If you criticize me for anything,” said Susan nervously, “it should be for lack of originality in sleeping with my best friend’s husband.”
“Don’t dismiss it with your articulate cynicism, Susan. You were using real people. With real feelings. I was hurt and angry. I’m still very angry.”
“And hurt?”
“And hurt.”
Susan stopped herself, remembering that sarcasm had always been one of her more refined defenses. And now, although she kept telling herself she didn’t want Elizabeth’s forgiveness, Susan felt the fullness of this want for the first time in three years.
“It was so confusing,” Susan said. “There were so many lies going down at the end. And then I left. You don’t understand what was happening.”
“I understand why you left, all right. I just don’t get why you came back.”
The cocktail waitress, costumed in an ass-high red petticoat, approached. “May I serve you ladies another?”
Susan had been watching Elizabeth’s Dubonnet for signs of movement, hoping that she would want a second drink, that she would want more time together.
“No thank you,” said Elizabeth, crunching on a piece of ice.
Susan ordered another beer. God, she was still making all the moves. It had always been like this. She was tempted to make an acerbic comment about the waitress’ costume but that would have been an easy claim on their wounded sisterhood.
“I came back because we’re all still alive. I thought we had a lot to give each other.”
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