Poles Apart

by Terry Fallis

  “Seems like a sound analysis to me, even for a man,” she said. “But quite rare among men. Some might call it downright weird. Not I, but some.”

  “Yeah, well, plenty do think it’s weird, including my own mother, and many of the women I’ve dated in the last decade or so.”

  “I’m sorry. I can see how that could pose a problem in affairs of the heart.”

  “But it bugs me that everyone thinks it’s so odd that I should be a committed feminist. No one thought it was weird when so many white students worked on black voter registration drives in the south. Isn’t this the same thing?”

  “In principle, yes, but in practice, perhaps not,” she replied. “Based on your father’s daily performances, he clearly has some Neanderthal tendencies. How does he feel about his hardcore feminist son?”

  “Well, my dad is a lifelong Republican and spent his entire career, nearly forty years, on the line at Ford, surrounded mainly by like-minded men – not exactly a crucible of progressive social thought.”

  “Ah, I see. So while you were focused on gender equality, he was focused on fender quality,” she quipped.

  “Very nice,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Anyway, for quite a while, I think my dad thought I was gay, or a communist, or perhaps a gay communist. I don’t quite fathom the logic in that. But my father has never been known for his logic.”

  “What did you do after you decided on your cause?”

  “I borrowed and bought books and started reading up on the history of sexism and the women’s movement. I knew that not being a woman left me unable to truly experience the injustice I was fighting, so I tried to compensate by reading everything I could get my hands on. I read Wollstonecraft, de Beauvoir, Friedan, Millet, Dworkin, Jong, Brownmiller, MacKinnon, Steinem, you. I read you. I read them all, including the emerging Canadian feminist writers. In fact, Women and Children First by Michele Landsberg was as influential as almost anything else I read, back then.”

  “My goodness, aren’t we earnest. I’m impressed. And you actually read their books? I mean, really read them?”

  “Of course! Cover to cover. Most of them were great. The good ones made the issues so simple and straightforward. I remember thinking that if every man on earth could read one or two of those books, we might make significant progress in a very short time,” I said. “Anyway, in the longer term, my goal was to graduate and begin a career as a crusading freelance journalist, exposing injustice, righting wrongs, of course with a focus on women’s issues. Yeah, right. That worked out well.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “The world was not ready for a young man with the feminist bit between his teeth who wanted to write about women’s equality. You were an anomaly, an aberration, a freak.”

  “Well, let’s go with anomaly, shall we?”

  “Certainly,” she agreed. “So, however committed and informed you were, no one would hire you or assign you stories on the women’s beat because it just wasn’t credible. Some news outlets were skeptical. Some feminist editors might even have thought of you as fifth columnist, an undercover agent from the male species, bent on keeping women in their place.”

  “Wow, you are good,” I said. “It’s like you were there with me.”

  “I know that world. It was my world, a long time ago.”

  “Anyway, I ended up taking any writing gigs I could get, just to put food on the table and pay the rent. I’ve written very compelling newsletter stories for the Artificial Joint Manufacturers Association – think orthopedic, not narcotic – the Septic Tank Cleaners Association, the Canadian Society of Spiritualists, and the North American Broomball Federation. Surely you’ve read some of my work. I get all the big stories.”

  “Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, I know, but you’re surviving as a writer. That’s saying something,” she replied.

  “Thanks, but it gets worse,” I said. “In the last five years, I’ve gained a reputation as the ‘go-to’ writer for the cosmetics and make-up trade journals. The money is good and I’ve just kept doing it, despite the self-loathing and sense of betrayal.”

  “And the aging student activist slice of your soul is dying a little with each mascara article. Am I right?”

  “I like to think of it as the slow but steady hollowing out of my principles. I’m now supporting the multibillion-dollar cosmetic machine that enslaves women and girls in the bonds of the beauty myth. It’s pathetic, depressing, and demoralizing.”

  “Very poetic. You should write that down,” she teased.

  “I’m being paid by the very forces I worked against, while in the movement.”

  “And you’re not happy.”

  “I am not happy.”

  “And discovering a certain old woman in a rehab hospital in Orlando only makes it worse,” she suggested.

  “Beverley, if I can call you Beverley, meeting you is an incredible thrill. But I guess it’s reminded me of who I once was and who I seem to be now. It’s as if my life peaked in university when, at the time, I thought I was just getting started. Instead, it’s been a steady decline ever since.”

  “Calm yourself, young Everett,” she soothed. “You’re an unusual man, I’ll grant you that. But you’re young, and your heart and head seem to be in the right place. You’ve got a lot of time yet to make the mark you always wanted to make.”

  I was so focused on Beverley and my own wallowing that I hadn’t noticed him until he was nearly upon us.

  “I let down my guard for one minute and my own son is out here trying to put the moves on my girl,” Dad said as he pushed his walker close and dropped onto the bench.

  “Woman, Dad, she’s a full-grown woman, and she certainly doesn’t belong to you,” I said evenly.

  “Thank you, Everett, but I’m sure your father wasn’t being serious,” Beverley said.

  I just looked at her with tilted head and elevated eyebrows.

  “The hell I wasn’t,” Dad snapped.

  I nodded.

  “Oh dear” was all she said.

  CHAPTER 3

  After a five-minute, sometimes heated, debate, I finally persuaded Dad that my intentions with Beverley were honourable and wholly platonic. I then lectured him again on his near constant use of the word “girl” when he really meant “woman.” You’d think I might have learned by then that lecturing my father was not exactly a high-percentage exercise. Let’s just say he was very adept at missing the point, over and over again. I’m almost certain he was just messing with me, but he sure didn’t make it obvious. Besides, I was still on the lookout for a stroke-related decline in his already limited powers of “perception and judgment.” Finally, after practically stalking Beverley for the preceding few weeks, I thought it time to formally introduce Billy Kane, diehard boorish man’s man, circa 1950, to Beverley Tanner, aging, iconic, witty feminist writer. Oil, I’d like you to meet water. Matter, say hello to anti-matter.

  Dad didn’t seem put off by her pioneering feminist background and beliefs, which I dutifully presented in some detail. Although, he might not have had a solid handle on what a feminist actually believes. I say that because he simply continued his shameless and thinly veiled sexual overtures, genuine or not. She parried his advances with patience, good humour, and the odd barb that may or may not have registered with Dad. It was painful to witness. He was clearly impressed that she’d written a book. He stared at her cover photo for an unduly long time before turning to Beverley, smiling, and nodding his head.

  “Nice. Very nice,” he said. “But I gotta say, as God is my witness, I think you look even hotter now.”

  “Dad, please don’t do this,” I said, eyeing the heavens.

  “It’s fine, Everett, he’s not being serious,” she said.

  “The hell I’m not.”

  “And there you have it, my father has once again crashed right through the good-taste barrier, in record time.”

  This banter carried on for another few minutes until I coul
d take it no more.

  “Okay, that’s it.” I stood up and pulled Dad back to his feet.

  “Whoa! Calm down, son, I’m just having a bit of fun,” he protested.

  “Dad, trust me when I say this. It’s only fun for you.”

  “Ouch,” Beverley said with a wince and a wink.

  We left her on the bench and walked all the way to the end of the Yellow path. Then we tried a section of the Blue path until he was too tired to talk. Mission accomplished. We rested for a few minutes and then headed back inside.

  Chevrolet was where he always seemed to be – directly between us and the door. Dad went right up beside him.

  “Okay, look, Chevy, this is getting boring. I think we gotta bury the hatchet if we’re going to be living under the same roof, don’t you?”

  Chevrolet looked wary but said nothing.

  “Okay, me first,” Dad said. “I’m Billy Kane and I worked the line at Ford for nearly forty years.”

  “Where?” Chevrolet asked with apparent disdain.

  “Dearborn, then Oakville, up in Canada, then back to Dearborn till I got packaged out. You?”

  Chevrolet paused for moment as if deciding whether to accept the olive branch Dad had extended.

  “Kenny Jenkins. Forty-six years at GM in Flint, till they shut it all down. I started out making cars but in the end was only turning out generators and fuckin’ fuel filters. Sad. Broke my heart.”

  “Okay, so we did the same goddamn thing on different sides of the fence. We got plenty of stuff to talk about.”

  Kenny just stared out at the walking paths as if Dad wasn’t leaning over him.

  “Okay, I’ll start the wheel a turnin’,” my dad said. “It’s hard to get this out, but I’m prepared to say that the Corvette is an American classic. Okay, Chevy, you’re up.”

  Finally, Kenny Jenkins turned slowly to look at Dad. He sighed.

  “All right, Ford man, all right. You’re goddamned right about the Vette. But I guess the Stang wasn’t a bad car either, but only with the 351 Cleveland under the hood. The Windsor engine was pure shit.”

  “Well, the Cleveland was definitely better, but the Windsor wasn’t that bad.”

  They circled one another for a few more minutes before Dad got tired standing and we headed back inside. They seemed to have paved enough common ground to park their respective cars on the same lot. That was a good sign.

  “Good on you, Dad,” I said, as I armed him back to his room.

  “Life is short, son, even if you’ve spent most of it building cars.”

  He’d been doing a lot of walking. But even though I tried, I had difficulty seeing any measurable improvement in his gait. He still seemed to be dragging his left leg as if he had absolutely no control over it.

  We made it back to his room, where he tipped himself onto his bed. I helped him swing his bad leg up. He closed his eyes for a time and sighed.

  “Dad, does your left side feel any different, now that we’ve spent a week or so walking the equivalent of the Boston Marathon?”

  He thought for a moment.

  “I can’t say it does,” he replied. “You know, I thought I’d be down twenty pounds and out of this joint by now, or at least dancing the tango with a nurse with my hand on her ass.”

  For once, I bit, rather than unleashed, my tongue. Letting it go seemed wrong. It always seemed wrong. But another rebuke from me would hardly accomplish the desired outcome.

  “Dad, this is a long-term thing. It’s going to take time. And everyone recovers at a different pace. But you’ll get there if you just keep doing what you’re doing – and I’m only talking about the walking part.”

  “Blah, blah, blah” was all he said.

  Right on cue, Beverley appeared at the door.

  “Everett, if you can pop down to my room, it’s two down and across the hall, I’ve got something I think you’d like to see.”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “Jesus Murphy! There it is, right out in the open! Shameless. And while I’m lying right here, too,” Dad piped up in mock indignation. “This is moving a little too fast. Just what exactly are your intentions, ma’am?”

  “Well, Billy boy, based on your reaction, I’d say I’ve already fulfilled my intentions,” she said, and promptly disappeared from view down the hall.

  Dad just looked at me and smirked.

  “Hell, she is a real pistol, that one,” he said, shaking his head.

  She was more than a pistol. At one time, Beverley Tanner was a leader among the most prominent and recognizable feminists in North America. She was part of the small group of activists who helped Gloria Steinem launch Ms. magazine back in 1971. But by the early eighties, she had left Ms., receded from the public eye, and was now largely forgotten (except by amateur feminist historians, like me).

  A few minutes later, I knocked, though her door was already open.

  If I’d surfaced from a coma in her room, I’d have had difficulty deciding if I were in a home with hospital equipment or a hospital with homey touches. She was sitting in a distinctly non-hospital easy chair by her window. She waved me in and I took the more institutional and uncomfortable chair across from her. A weathered wooden trunk with a kind of fringed tablecloth draped over it sat on the floor between us, impersonating a coffee table. In my limited experience, hospitals don’t usually provide antique wooden trunks, so I assumed it belonged to her. Her pen and paper rested on it, always within reach.

  “It looks like you’ve settled in here,” I said. “How long do you think you’ll be staying?”

  “I’ve been in here, on and off, for months at a time, for the last four years. They’re watching me pretty closely. My last stroke hit my left side quite hard. Two months ago, I was walking like your father is now. I expect I’ll be here for another month or so, unless I’m struck again. And frankly, that’s probably what will happen. I’m a big old stroke waiting to happen. It’s sort of what it must be like to live in San Francisco, waiting for the quake to end all quakes. But I’m still here and I’m still waiting.”

  She smiled and raised her hands, as if to say “Ta-daaa!”

  “How do you know it’ll happen again? How do the doctors know?”

  “They’re smart folks. They look at my history, my blood, my circulatory system, and my damned propensity to throw clots, and they just know. There’s not much mystery to my situation. So I wait.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I handed her my copy of her memoirs.

  “I forgot to ask when we were outside, but I’d be thrilled if you would inscribe this.”

  “Well, you thrill mighty easily,” she replied, reaching for the pen on her coffee table/trunk. “Of course, I’ll sign it.”

  “Two Ts?” she asked.

  “Yep, two Ts.”

  “Well, I haven’t done this for more than a few years, now.”

  She finished and handed it back to me.

  It said: “From one ardent but unusual warrior to another. Keep the faith. On the eve of equality, Beverley Tanner.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot,” I said. I paused. “What was it like, I mean, really like, back at the very beginning?”

  “I must look older than I am,” she quipped. “But if we’re talking about a woman’s place in the world, you’re dead right. I believe it did start, as you say, right back at the very beginning.”

  “Well, Ms. magazine started in ’71, didn’t it?”

  “Ha! A common misconception,” she replied. “In my sometimes addled mind, Ms. magazine started much, much earlier. In fact, I’ve always thought the die was cast even before humans had language. In the earliest stirrings of human civilization, when survival often depended on physical strength, men found themselves at the top of the food chain by default, despite their obvious cerebral shortcomings. Add in the physical reality of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing, and the deal was done. The subjugation of women was etched in stone alongside the cave paintings that
celebrated man as the great hunter. Not everyone agrees with me on that score, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

  I nodded, thinking.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, why did you kind of fade from the feminist scene? The book mentioned a rift of some kind, as I recall.”

  “Like most social movements, anger was the founding fuel. Without it, I doubt anything would have happened. But anger has its poisonous side. It can stop you from seeing things clearly. That worried me, because eventually, the media and the people stopped listening. After a while, the rage that caught their attention in the early days just seemed to wash over them. It was like we’d somehow inoculated them against anger even though we were all still banging the angry drum. That’s when the phrase ‘feminists have no sense of humour’ seemed to take hold. And it stuck. It’s been a millstone hanging around the movement’s neck ever since.”

  “And you were ‘the funny one,’ ” I said.

  “That’s what they called me. I always believed humour could be a trenchant instrument of change, even social change, if wielded carefully. But most of the activists around me thought it would trivialize what was a very serious issue.”

  “Right. Hence the rift,” I said.

  “Hence the rift,” she agreed. “I think when you take aim at an injustice armed not just with rage, but with humour, you stand a better shot at winning. And I have always loved to laugh, especially at whatever I’m fighting. It shows the movement has confidence. When you laugh at patriarchy, you weaken it. You take away some of its power.”

  “So what do you think of the movement today?” I asked.