The Female Persuasion

by Meg Wolitzer

  Faith appeared again at moments like this, stamped all of a sudden into a conversation. Walking in the city, Greer would have occasional sightings of an elegant older woman, perhaps flanked by other women, and she would hurry to catch up with her. But then the woman would turn to the side, revealing herself, and not only was it not Faith, it was laughably not Faith. The woman was thirty. Or the woman was black. Or, once, the woman was a man. Or, most often, the woman was someone who vaguely resembled Faith and could have been her stunt double: lovely and accomplished-looking. During the Women’s March, everyone buoyed by the sense of being right, Greer was certain that Faith was there somewhere—she wasn’t one of the speakers—and that maybe she would see her. Though their relationship had ended in the worst way, the ice would be broken then and there, and everything that had happened between them would no longer matter. Sometimes you had to let go of your convictions, or at least loosen them far more than you ever thought you would. She would call out, “Faith?” and in the middle of the crowd of roaring women, Faith would swivel her head and see her. Their long period of being apart would end. She would be returned to Greer like a lost person in SoulFinder. Although, as Zee once pointed out, in SoulFinder you had to go looking for the person you had lost.

  * * *

  • • •

  Faith, now, was closer to eighty than seventy. She still worked at the foundation, though three years earlier Emmett Shrader had died of a massive heart attack. His death was itself a significant story, covered widely in the news section of the newspaper and extending into the business section, with profiles and encomiums; but there were also rumors online about the cause of death. He died in bed with a young woman, it was said, having taken a drug for erectile dysfunction. It wasn’t that he had been told not to take the drug; he had apparently been told not to have sex, not anymore, or at least not the kind of sex that Emmett seemingly liked, which was active, athletic, whole-bodied, heart-quaking.

  The foundation was to continue, he’d instructed in his will, though he hadn’t paid attention to the details enough to specify at what level, and the people upstairs had decided to reduce Loci’s operating budget bit by bit until the foundation essentially became a low-level and modest speakers’ forum. It occupied a place in the world similar to the one that Bloomer had occupied at the end of its long life.

  But still it carried on, and still Faith Frank stayed in charge, with a vastly scaled-down staff and a much smaller office on a lower floor of the Strode Building. Nothing had ever come out publicly about the mentor program. Ben, who was still at Loci, told Greer that Faith often stayed late at work, and because her new office was so much smaller, she’d had to have a few inches shaved off the top and bottom of her suffrage-door desk so that it could still fit. Greer imagined Faith sitting there grimly watching as someone came in with a saw and cut down the door.

  Loci no longer held summits, but small gatherings of twenty-five or thirty people or so, the same size as the lunchtime speeches that they used to give as teasers leading up to the summits. Faith wrote very occasional op-eds for the New York Times and the Washington Post, but had ceased most public speaking. Greer saw pictures of Faith once in a while; more to the point, she sought them out online. It was Faith, despite the deeper lines in the face like a fisherwoman in a woodcut. Faith with the smile, and the intelligence, and always the trademark sexy boots. But Faith in a tighter space, with a lower budget, in wild, uncertain times. Faith still working. Misogyny had stormed the world in an all-out, undisguised raid.

  The Senate seat of Anne McCauley, who had retired and whose late-life hobby was canning plums, had been filled by her daughter Lucy McCauley-Gevins, whose views of reproductive rights were even more extreme than her mother’s, and who had been given much more support and money. Loci was small; Senator Lucy McCauley-Gevins was getting bigger; Fem Fatale had lost its popularity over the past couple of years, but there were other sites to replace it, newer, fresher ones providing sharp commentary, humor, and a receptacle for rage; Ragtimes, that sweet little play, was occasionally still performed in community theaters and high schools around the country; and Outside Voices showed no sign of falling off the bestseller list.

  Also, Opus’s old hit “The Strong Ones” was now the song on a famous television commercial, accompanied by the image of a pair of female hands pulling at a sheet of paper towel, which did not rip or disintegrate. Some people defended Opus’s decision, said it was good to commodify art, because at least then you could get your message into the shared waters of the culture. Everyone knew that you could never rest, never stop being vigilant, and even though it wasn’t always enough anymore just to keep working, still there wasn’t the luxury of stopping. Faith sat at her desk in her small office late at night, in lamplight, with papers spread out around her.

  For a long time Greer had thought that if she ever did get in touch with Faith, she would give her the latest bulletins from her life. She’d write and say:

  Get this, Faith. I ended up marrying my high school boyfriend, who I once cried over in your office. At first I was hesitant to get married; I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. But we knew we wanted to have children, so it made sense financially. I knew I loved him, but I don’t feel that all love relationships have to culminate in marriage. I was ambivalent at first, but then I came around.

  We had a wedding on a hill right near where we both grew up. At the reception, my mother put on a clown show for the kids in attendance. My father stood squinting out over the valley and he seemed really happy for me, but maybe it was only because he had a mild buzz. Also, my friend Zee got married to her longtime partner. We joked about how she was far less ambivalent about getting married than I was. She was raring to get married; it made her so happy. Not just that she and Noelle could do it—that it was legal and common and that progress had been made in this huge way—but mostly that they were doing it. She loved being involved with every aspect of planning the wedding. The shower. The seating arrangements. The song that would be played for the first dance. She just loved it. Her parents, both judges, presided. Everyone cried.

  And Cory and I have a daughter. Emilia, named after Cory’s grandmother. My labor was twenty-three hours long, and she emerged looking entirely like Cory, as though I had had nothing to do with it. Only now, later on, am I starting to be carved into the stone.

  The main thing about me is that I’m tired a lot. But I’m tired, in part, because my book has had me doing nonstop promotion. The day I sold it, the day I got the call, was so exciting. Sometimes I think about how excited you’d get when something big happened to someone else. How you always said it was good for everyone to see more women doing what they loved. I think you would be excited for me. I’ve decided you are. But I know you have other things to think about, other people who want your time, which I know you probably have to dole out really, really carefully, preserving yourself. Self-preservation is as important as generosity. (I talk about this a little in my book.) Because if you don’t preserve yourself, keep enough for yourself, then of course you have nothing to give.

  Did you see that you’re mentioned first in the acknowledgments? I wondered if you would see it, and maybe call me, or send me a note and say, “Nailed it!” It’s true that without you I would never have written it, and I hope you know that. Despite what happened between us. (Sometimes I think that maybe you regret what you said to me at the end, in your office. I choose to think you regret it, a little.)

  But lately, Greer had been wishing she could say something different to Faith.

  You made my head crack open in college, she’d tell her. Then, for years, I watched you take whatever you had—your strength, your opinions, your generosity, your influence; and of course your indignation at injustice; all of that—and pour it into other people, usually into women. You never then said to those women: okay, so what you need to do now is pass it on. But that was what often happened: the big, long story of women pourin
g what they had into one another. A reflex, maybe, or sometimes an obligation; but always a necessity.

  At the end of the letter, Greer would say: when I was in your office that last time, and you were so upset with me and called me out on my behavior, even in that bad moment there was a kind of effect. You made it necessary for me to go and apologize to my best friend, to tell her the truth; I don’t know why I didn’t see that that was what I had to do. I mean, for years I didn’t see it.

  But as Greer sat and imagined telling Faith all of this, she still didn’t know if she ever would. It might be too much information. It might be unwelcome. It might be that she and Faith had always been on a long, leisurely path toward collapse, and finally it had happened. The moment that the older one first encourages the younger one, maybe the older one already knows it might eventually happen. She knows, while the younger one stays unaware and only excited. One person replaces another, Greer thought. That’s what happens; that’s what we do, over and over.

  Who is going to replace me? she thought, shocked at first at the idea, and then finding it kind of funny, and relaxing into it. She saw various women wandering through her house, populating the place like law enforcement with a search warrant, making themselves at home, overturning anything they wanted. She homed in on an older Kay Chung, rifling through Greer’s belongings. Kay wandered around, curious, excited, flipping through the different books on the shelves, finding ones that Greer hadn’t lent her but which looked good, then eating from Greer’s stash of cashews, swiping a couple of Greer’s multivitamins from the big amber bottle on the kitchen counter, as if they might give her the energy, power, and stature that she would need, going forward. Kay went into the den and looked at the soft easy chair there, the reading lamp angled beside it.

  Sit in the chair, Kay, Greer thought. Lean back and close your eyes. Imagine being me. It’s not so great, but imagine it anyway.

  At Loci, they had all talked loftily about power, creating summits around it as though it was a quantifiable thing that would last forever. But it wouldn’t, and you didn’t know that when you were just starting out. Greer thought of Cory sitting in his brother’s bedroom, far from anything having to do with power, taking Slowy out of his box and placing him nearby on the blue carpet. Slowy blinking, moving an arm, craning his head forward. Power eventually slid away, Greer thought. People did what they could, as powerfully as they could, until they couldn’t do it anymore. There wasn’t much time. In the end, she thought, the turtle might outlive them all.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m endlessly grateful for the help, encouragement, opinions, and wisdom of my brilliant editor, Sarah McGrath, as well as my tireless publicist, Jynne Martin, and my longtime publisher, Geoffrey Kloske. I also owe so much to Suzanne Gluck, who is simply a perfect agent.

  The following people were helpful in ways both big and small, and they have my thanks and admiration: Jennifer Baumgardner; Elly Brinkley; Jenn Daly; Jen Doll; Delia Ephron; Alison Fairbrother, who is uncommonly generous and knows everything about everything; Sheree Fitch; Lisa Fliegel; Jennifer Gilmore; Adam Gopnik; Jesse Green; Jane Hamilton; Katie Hartman; Lydia Hirt; Sarah Jefferies; Danya Kukafka; Julie Klam; Emma Kress; Laura Krum; Sandra Leong; Sara Lytle; Laura Marmor; Joanna McClintick; Claire McGinnis; Lindsay Means; Susan Scarf Merrell, whose instinct and kindness are unparalleled; Ann Packer; Martha Parker; Glory Anne Plata; Katha Pollitt, the brilliant feminist writer whose encouragement and conversations about this book have meant so much to me; Suzzy Roche; Ruth Rosen; Cathleen Schine, who offered her invaluable novelist’s eye; Janny Scott; Clio Seraphim; Courtney Sheinmel, for her late-night brainstorms and friendship; Marisa Silver; Peter Smith, a great observer, reader of fiction, and friend; Julie Strauss-Gabel; Courtney Sullivan, who was full of excellent, sage advice, knowledge, and good cheer; Rebecca Traister, for her essential words, on the page and in person; Karla Zimonja.

  And finally, as ever, thanks and love to my parents, and to Nancy and Cathy, and to Richard, Gabriel, Devon, and Charlie.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, among other books.

  MegWolitzer.com

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