The Female Persuasion

by Meg Wolitzer

  “Wow. What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. It’s complicated.” There was a sound of nose-blowing. “For a long time I thought I was doing something real and honest there. And you know it got semi-bullshitty, and that there was less for me to do that I cared about, but still I tried. And she gave me that speech to deliver, and it went so well, Zee, and I was so excited; it was one of those defining moments we’ve talked about. But it turns out it was something else. ShraderCapital did something wrong, and Faith is okay with looking the other way; business as usual. I even ate her meat,” she added. “Repeatedly.”

  “What do you mean, you ate her meat?”

  “Forget it, nothing.”

  “So what will you do now?” Zee asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Come to Chicago.” Zee couldn’t remember offhand what the weekend held; whatever it was, she would try to move things around, to ask one of her colleagues to fill in for her. Her job required so much flexibility, because people’s emergencies did not happen according to any particular schedule.

  Over the years at work, Zee had gotten her reorientation time down to practically nothing. These days she could answer a phone in the middle of sleep and sound perky. She could drive a car dripping wet from a shower. Sometimes she was awakened at dawn and had to get on the train while the sky was rosy with optimism, in order to head out to the scene of a homicide or suicide, a fire, a moment of unparalleled bleakness or chaos. Other times she drove to her job in the middle of the night, and was so hungry when she left that she would try to find one of those places where cops gathered on breaks, and there she would sit among men and women in uniform, ordering eggs and home fries and butter-soaked toast—hoping this would somehow shore her up after what she’d just seen.

  She and Noelle lived in an apartment off Clark Street in Andersonville, which had a pretty significant lesbian population. Noelle had stayed on at the school in the Learning Octagon™ network despite the many problems, and she was now principal, a terrifying figure to some of the students, but still a figure of resplendence to Zee. In Andersonville, a place where she and Noelle could sometimes walk around holding hands, she thought about how furtive she often felt most other places. It was as though she had folded the furtiveness into her entire self.

  Over time she had begun to describe herself in a matter-of-fact way as queer instead of gay. Queer felt stronger, queerer, its difference front and center. For Zee, lesbian had gone the way of the cassette tape. She’d always said she was political, but looking back on it, she felt it had been an avocation; now her work life was political in some deep and consistent way, she thought, because she entered the homes of struggling people, and saw what their lives were like. The windows and bulletin boards of cafés and stores in this neighborhood were thick with volunteering signage. Zee gave hours to a group that was involved with homeless youth. And they always needed help at the HIV groups, and also a group that was organizing around racial justice. Someone Zee knew always wanted her to come to meetings in a church basement.

  Zee did not want to spend her free time in a church basement. At first she pictured the low ceilings and the long tables with bottles of Apple & Eve apple juice. She saw folding chairs, and even heard the scrape of chair foot on linoleum, and the creak as more chairs were opened, and then someone said, “Make room, make room,” and the circle widened. But she came to like some of the meetings, and she started to run others. Noelle went sometimes too, though often she said no, exhausted at the end of a workday, feet up, more work to do.

  Right now, when Zee got off the phone with Greer, Noelle was on the sofa composing her weekly letter to parents and guardians. “So listen,” Zee said. “Greer is coming here tomorrow. She’s going to stay with us. I assume that’s okay, despite not giving you any warning.”

  When Greer rang the bell in the early afternoon the next day, having taken an Uber from O’Hare, Zee was ready for her in the way she was always ready at work. She was prepared for the emergency that was happening to her closest friend. She sat Greer down on the couch and put a glass of very cold water in her hand, because hydration was surprisingly helpful, one of her instructors had said, and water was free, and ubiquitous. It couldn’t put out anyone’s fire, but it could make the person remember: I am part of the real world, a person holding a glass. I haven’t lost that ability. Sometimes Zee would watch the person lift the glass and drink, and she was relieved to watch the hand move, the segments of the throat move, to see the way the body participated, even now.

  Greer drank gratefully, and when she was done she looked up. “Thanks for pushing me to come here,” she said. “I really didn’t expect to suddenly be unemployed.”

  “All right,” said Zee. “Talk to me.”

  So Greer told her a long and convoluted story about young women in Ecuador; about a successful rescue, and a botched post-rescue. But when she was done talking she didn’t look any more relieved. She was actually wringing her hands, Zee saw. Always, with clients, Zee looked at the hands; were they in fists, were they in prayer formation, or were they in this kind of desperation?

  “And there’s something else,” said Greer.

  “Okay.”

  Greer took in a ragged breath and then stood up in front of Zee as if about to do a little presentation. “I wasn’t going to say this, ever,” she said, “but now I guess I am. Now I guess I have to.” She closed her eyes, then opened them again. “I never gave Faith the letter.”

  “What are you talking about? What letter?”

  Greer looked down at the floor and her mouth twisted up strangely, in the stroke face of the about-to-cry. “Your letter,” Greer said, and then she stopped there, as though it would be so obvious what she meant.

  “What?”

  “Your letter,” Greer tried again with agitation now, and a little sob. Then she thrust out her hands, as if that would clarify it. “The one you gave me like four years ago to give to Faith, when you wanted a job there too. I still have it. I haven’t opened it or anything. But I have it. I never gave it to her.”

  Zee just kept looking at her. She let the silence expand, trying to work out what this actually meant. “I’m confused,” Zee said. “Because you told me you gave it to her, back then, and that she said there were no jobs.”

  “I know. Zee, I lied to you.”

  Zee let this moment bloom its shitty little bloom. Whenever she found out something shocking or even disappointing about someone she cared about, she was taken by surprise. She thought about her clients, and how surprised they always were by behaviors in the people they loved, which, from the outside, might not have seemed surprising. A depressed husband took his own life. A grandmother collapsed. A daughter who had been agitated had a psychotic episode. Zee’s clients were more than surprised by all of this; they were shocked to the point of trauma.

  Today, Greer had come to Chicago in her own kind of shock. She had been an acolyte of Faith’s, but had been startled by Faith’s betrayal. It hadn’t ever been even between Greer and Faith, and never could be.

  But maybe it wasn’t entirely even between Greer and Zee either. Greer had made it uneven, and now they too needed a correction. What was astonishing was that Greer and Zee, unlike Greer and Faith, had had an actual friendship. It had been real, but look at that, Greer had secretly fucked Zee over anyway.

  Zee might actually have had a chance to work for Faith back in the beginning, to help push the foundation forward. It was possible that Faith would’ve said yes after reading her letter. “I know it was horrible,” Greer was saying. “I mean, I’m sure it doesn’t make it better to say that you wouldn’t even have liked working there, but it’s true. In the beginning it was good, but then you know it got so impersonal, and I stopped getting to meet the women whose lives we were trying to help. It was like we were just pouring money into a speakers’ bureau and that was it. And I litera
lly had the thought, several times: Zee would hate this. In your work you’re actually there on the ground. And we’re just at arm’s length too much of the time. I remind myself of this sometimes, as though it somehow makes it better that I did what I did to you. But I know it doesn’t make it better. It was horrible of me,” she repeated.

  “Yeah, it was,” said Zee in a quiet, contained little voice. Maybe Greer was right, and she would have hated it there. But what did it matter? The thing that mattered was that Greer had kept her from being there, which was so peculiar, so hurtful, and made everything between them appear strange and different now. “But why would you do that?” Zee asked. “I was the one to talk to you about her. I was the one who basically led you into everything. You had barely even heard of Faith Frank.”

  “It was . . . about my parents, I think,” Greer said. “About wanting someone to see something in me.”

  “I saw something in you. And Cory did too.”

  “I know. This was different.” Greer looked down; she couldn’t even seem to make eye contact with Zee, and maybe that was just as well. They needed a rest from looking so hard at each other. All Zee did all day was look hard at people. Her eyes were tired from all that looking, studying, empathizing with, scrutinizing; all that helping, helping, helping.

  Now Greer was ashamed, so let her be ashamed, Zee thought. Greer had actually done a thing to her, a real thing.

  Zee had gotten over her disappointment four years earlier and gone on to have a life that Faith would approve of; she was sure of that. Working one-on-one with people, instead of with roomfuls of them. She did emergency work that mattered, often involving issues that concerned women. But as the truth of what Greer had done became familiar information now, Zee felt as if the long affection that she had felt for Greer since college was made thin and wan. She felt exhausted, and was sorry that she’d invited Greer here for the weekend. Were they going to discuss the letter, and what Greer had done to Zee, again and again?

  Greer came forward on the couch and took Zee’s wrists like a desperate suitor. “Zee,” she said. “I’m the worst person, I know I am.” Zee stayed furiously silent. “Apparently I never knew that I’m one of those women who hates women, like you always say. I confessed to Faith about your letter back in the beginning. She reacted like it wasn’t a big deal! But yesterday when I quit my job, she was hurt and angry, and out of the blue she brought it up in front of everyone. She busted me. Said I was a bad friend. A bad feminist. A bad woman. And I guess she’s right. I didn’t want to share her, I didn’t want to let you in. I am the cuntiest woman, Zee. I am a cunt,” Greer said fiercely. “I seriously am.”

  Zee was still shocked and a little lightheaded, but she also felt tight and ungiving. She was probably supposed to say no, no, Greer, you aren’t any of those things. You made a stupid mistake. Women sometimes do really bad things to each other, just like men do, and just like men and women do to each other too. But she didn’t know if she felt this way, and anyway she didn’t want to comfort Greer; she didn’t want to direct her trauma training at her when she could have been directing it all day today at other people who needed it. Zee imagined telling Noelle everything tonight in bed while Greer lay on the opened sleeper sofa in the living room. “You won’t believe what Greer confessed to me,” she would whisper. And Noelle would of course be furious on her behalf.

  “It was a really selfish thing you did,” Zee finally said to Greer now. Greer nodded vigorously, relieved. “You could have just told me you weren’t comfortable with me working there. You could have said that to me.”

  “I know.”

  “And you know that I have a history of being betrayed by women, right?” said Zee. “Starting with that law clerk of my mom’s who outed me, remember?”

  “Yes,” Greer said in a trembling little voice.

  “And now you’ve done it too.”

  Greer looked so terrible, all shiny and messy and horrified. A good friend would say yes, yes, I forgive you, and the two women could embrace in the way that women did. Women, who could be so easy with each other. Women, who were physical and loved each other, even when they were not lovers and never would be. There had always been an agreement, unsaid but binding, that the two friends would look out for each other. On the stupid reality TV show that Zee and Noelle sometimes watched—the one where the rich women from different gated communities spent a year living together in a Conestoga wagon—whenever the women weren’t fighting and clawing at one another, they said to one another, “I’ve got your back.” Even those women, those ludicrous women pumped with collagen and money, had one another’s backs, but Greer didn’t have hers.

  Zee moved away to the far end of the couch, experiencing her own small trauma. “When Faith showed more interest in you in the ladies’ room, I felt a pang,” Zee said. “I did! Because I’d been this little activist before college, and you were basically home reading books and having sex with your boyfriend. Which is fine; it’s just different. But I wanted to help you. You’d had this bad experience at that frat party. And you were shy. But the meek shall inherit the earth, right? For someone who was always so shy, Greer, and who couldn’t ask for what she needed, in fact you’ve asked for everything you needed. You basically went in and got what you wanted, and made yourself known. You raised your hand that night in the Ryland Chapel. You raised it faster than me, and you got your question answered. And then you called Faith on the phone, and finally got a job with her. And you even gave her a frying pan. That took chutzpah. And, of course, you kept my letter from her. These are not classic shy-person actions, Greer, I’m just saying. They’re something else. Sneaky, maybe.” Coldly, Zee added, “You really know how to act in the face of power. I’ve never put that together before, but it’s true.” She stopped and looked straight at Greer. “You know, I didn’t need to work at your foundation,” she said. “I found what I like to do. You went to work for Faith Frank, the role model, the feminist, and I didn’t. But you know what? I think there are two kinds of feminists. The famous ones, and everyone else. Everyone else, all the people who just quietly go and do what they’re supposed to do, and don’t get a lot of credit for it, and don’t have someone out there every day telling them they’re doing an awesome job.

  “I don’t have a mentor, Greer, and I’ve never had one. But I’ve had different women in my life who I like to be around, and who seem to like me. I don’t need their approval. I don’t need their permission. Maybe I should’ve had a little more of this; it might have helped. But I didn’t, and well, okay, fine, you’re right, I’m sure I would’ve hated it there, and I don’t think I would have stayed very long. But I would’ve liked the chance to find out.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Greer.

  “You want to know how often I think about the fact that I didn’t get to work for Faith Frank? Almost never.”

  “Really?” Greer seemed impossibly grateful to hear this.

  “Yes.”

  “Will you forgive me?” Greer asked.

  “I need time,” Zee said.

  ELEVEN

  She wasn’t sure why she decided to call home late that night while waiting for the plane in Chicago. But it was just too lonely to sit there in O’Hare with CNN blabbing overhead, waiting another long hour for the flight. Her mother answered. “Are you all right?” Laurel said after the flat swap of hellos.

  “Why are you asking?”

  “Something in your voice.”

  “Actually, not really,” Greer said. “I’m in the airport in Chicago. I was supposed to stay over with Zee but I’m not. I’m flying to New York tonight, but then I don’t know what I’m going to do.” Her voice split.

  “Come home,” her mother said.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Macopee Public Library was quiet, and though a library was supposed to be quiet, this one had the feel of a failing restaurant that would soon go
out of business. It was dim there in the light of day, and a high school girl drowsed at the checkout desk, her services not really needed. But in the back was a room called the Emmanuel Gilland Children’s Room—whoever Emmanuel Gilland had been. It was the place where Greer had found A Wrinkle in Time as a girl, and had sat at a blond-wood table absorbed in its fully realized world. Scattered nearby were a couple of vinyl beanbag chairs leaking synthetic beans. On this day when Greer, lost and uprooted, entered the room behind her mother, who was in full clown regalia—the nose and wig and dotted outfit and size 90 shoes—she could hear sounds of children and parents who were already there waiting for the show.

  Greer had been in breath-holding mode; her mother had asked her there today because the show happened to be right in town. And Greer, who didn’t even understand why she’d said okay when her mother told her to come home for a few days of recovery—home to the place that had been such a lousy home much of the time—had also said okay, agreeing to sit and watch Laurel perform as a library clown. But she felt uneasy about it, worrying that her mother would look failed.

  The children arrayed themselves on the carpet and Greer sat in the corner on one of the beanbag chairs, which held her insecurely. In the dancing-mote light from the tall windows, Laurel jumped into place before her audience and said, “Good afternoon, ladies and germs.” Greer looked away as quickly as she could, letting the cornball joke roll past in the air, just another tumbling dust mote. But amazingly, there was laughter.

  “You said germs, clown!” cried a boy no older than four. “Didn’t you mean gentlemen?”

  “That’s what I said!” cried Laurel. “Ladies and germs!”

  “YOU SAID IT AGAIN!” the boy screamed, and now others piped in too, all of them shouting at Greer’s clown mother, who wore an innocent expression, and who was rising to the occasion in a way that was unfamiliar to Greer.

  But it wasn’t just that Laurel was apparently a good performer. After the show ended—a well-paced hour that used water squirts and expanding wands and deliberately ham-handed juggling and even a pratfall on the carpet, and then, finally, a “reading” from a wordless picture book called The Farmer and the Clown—the children stayed to meet the library clown. Greer watched as her mother took a boy and girl on her lap at the same time.