Also in that year came the death of the inventor of the rubber tire, which was changing the lives of Americans. Twenty years earlier, people had gotten around mostly by trolley: on the still familiar urban trolleys but also on interurbans, which ran for dozens and sometimes hundreds of miles from city to city. Now that system of ubiquitous public transportation was changing. An article in The New Republic entitled “Passing of the Interurbans” (August 20, 1919, pp. 92-93) points out that there was a decrease in passengers everywhere. The writer, C. J. Finger, attempts to persuade his readers of the futility of increasing fares, an expedient he calls “foolish.”
The trolley was doomed, and yet hundreds of lines existed and thousands of men worked on them. With the decrease in use came increases in fares—from six cents to seven, even eight—and wage cuts. And, inevitably, there were strikes. A savage strike took place in Denver in 1920 and one nearly as brutal in Albany and Troy, New York, in 1921. The trolley men of Boynton, Massachusetts, received news of a 25 percent wage cut, which seems outlandish but was typical, just before Christmas in 1920. On January 5, 1921, the conductors and motormen struck the line, and scabs were hired.
In the late afternoon of January 9, 1921, as a trolley operated by scabs made its way through the snowy New England countryside, it collided with one coming in the opposite direction. One person was killed. To the horror of the Boynton community, the dead young woman was Sarah Lipkin, the youngest sister of the known radical Gussie Lipkin. No one knows why Sarah Lipkin was journeying on the trolley that afternoon. Her body had barely been removed from the wreckage when rumors spread through Boynton that an arrest had been made. Gussie Lipkin had been found walking along the trolley tracks. Obviously, the frantic townspeople insisted, in conspiracy with the strikers and other sympathizers—and possibly in some mysterious collusion with her sister—Gussie had somehow altered the signals and caused the crash. She was dirty and exhausted, and readily confessed that she had been among the crowd of sympathizers who attempted to keep the trolley lines from operating, by any means at their disposal, that morning. Yet Gussie Lipkin insisted on her innocence of the crime with which she was charged: murder. Murder of her own sister.
“Hang the little Jew” was one of the slogans found painted on factory walls and fences in Boynton in the next few days. We can only speculate, decades later, on how much antiSemitism existed in the town at that time. The newspaper ran one editorial commenting on the high percentage of Jews in the “radical organizations among us.” “Let our Jewish neighbors look after their own,” said the editorial. “Law-abiding citizens desire nothing more of them than the same adherence to the rules of right and wrong, the ideals of our country, that we ask of ourselves.” Certainly there was no major anti-Semitic rally or demonstration; yet even in the courtroom testimony quoted above there is implied prejudice.
The trial lasted for seven weeks. The motormen of both trolleys, one of whom had been injured in the crash, testified at length. The jury found Gussie Lipkin not guilty. A year later she was arrested again, after a small demonstration by an anarchist group at a strike of women seamstresses. Clearly the authorities were determined to make some charge stick, and Lipkin spent eighteen months in the Boynton city jail after a successful prosecution on a charge of disorderly conduct and inciting to riot.
Gussie Lipkin left Boynton in her midtwenties and lived for a time in New York, then later in Paris. She studied art and became a sculptor. At some point she took the name Berry Cooper—Cooper being the name of her second husband. Her sculpture is not unknown. In midlife she returned to New England. In the last reference to her I can find, she was exhibiting sculpture in a show designed to raise money for the Freedom Riders in the early sixties. I can find no record of an obituary, but an artist of my acquaintance has told me she died of emphysema several years ago, while living in the west.
It’s tempting to speculate on why Gussie Lipkin has been so totally ignored. Her trial was somewhat notorious. The New York Times sent a correspondent to Boynton, although in the end it ran only two short mentions of Lipkin, buried in the back pages. A Jewish law student from New York University, Jacob Lauterman, wrote an amicus brief on behalf of a Jewish philanthropic organization and sent it to various left-wing organizations, without any results.
Maybe the energy of the left was already absorbed. It was the time of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, of Red-baiting and vigorous protests all over the nation. Even devoted servants of justice must choose their causes. Certainly the Jewish community was divided. There must have been embarrassment, and the fear that possibly Gussie Lipkin was not being framed, but was guilty. At her trial, her lawyer portrayed her as a selfless, idealistic young woman, overcome with grief at the death of her sister. In any case, Gussie Lipkin deserves some belated attention from all of us. Disturbing the dust on the yellowing pages of the Boynton Herald is evidence of a fiery spirit, a woman who refused to allow others to think for her, a stub-born, intelligent girl.
All week Ruben wondered if the model would wear clothes. Then Jeremiah was so slow picking her up on Thursday night she thought he wasn’t coming. She shifted the clumsy drawing pad to her other hand as she waited in the street. Her fingers, reaching around the edge of the pad, were cold, even in gloves. The pages blew open: her lumpy drawings in the dark.
He showed up. You know anything about this shit?
She touched the drawing pad on her lap. What shit? She thought he was upset that they’d had to chip in three dollars apiece to pay for the model. She was tired of Jeremiah’s objections to the drawing class.
—This dame Janet Grey hasn’t told you?
—Told me what?
—She’s dumping Deb.
Janet Grey had phoned an hour ago, while they were eating, and told Deborah that she needed only one adjunct teacher for the spring term because enrollments were down, and that she preferred to hire Toby Ruben.
—But why?
—Enrollments.
—But she’s so close to Deborah.
—Apparently she likes you better.
—Is Deborah furious with me?
—It’s not your fault.
Ruben thought they should skip the art class and go to Deborah, but she couldn’t bring herself to miss drawing the model.
—Deborah and I teach two classes apiece now. Couldn’t we each have one? Janet Grey told me yesterday she wants me to teach two sections again in the spring.
—I don’t know the details.
They were going into the building. She tried to stop thinking about Deborah and Janet Grey. She was afraid Deborah would think she was in cahoots with Janet Grey. Yet how could Deborah imagine that? Deborah was the one who liked her. Ruben didn’t like Janet. She’d had maybe three conversations alone with Janet. She and Janet taught on Tuesday, when Deborah wasn’t there. Once, they had talked about Deborah, only a little. Janet asked Ruben, Would you consider Deborah an intellectual? Ruben didn’t know what she meant. She didn’t know whether it would be good or bad to be an intellectual. What had she said?
She had said, Sometimes I’m surprised at things she hasn’t read. Oh, my. She had said that.
Gregory told them how they’d draw from the model, who would change poses every two minutes. They were to try to draw the gesture: a few swift lines. The students clumped into the cluttered corner as usual and dragged out easels. Ruben set up her easel. She took two pieces of charcoal from her smudgy plastic bag. She was always dropping and breaking charcoal. There was no place to set it down. She taped four or five big sheets of paper to the easel with masking tape, and all but the top one slipped out from behind and fell. She put the charcoal on the floor and retaped the paper with more tape. She had never learned to do it right.
Gregory, talking about gesture, waved to someone behind them. Opposite Ruben, Jeremiah coughed. The whole class had colds. They had never come to know one another, but they snuffled in unison, unable to blow their noses because their hands were so dirty with charcoal. They wer
e all bundled in thick sweaters because the room was always cold.
Gregory plugged in a space heater near the platform on which, all term, he’d set jugs and broken statues and ladders and tables. On the platform was a chair. Then he nodded, and a rosy-skinned naked young woman, whose crinkly reddish hair was pulled into a big ponytail, walked from behind Ruben and stepped onto the platform. She crossed her legs and stretched her arms above her head, fingers just touching.
In a corner of her page, Ruben began to draw a small, tight naked woman whose legs were too short for the rest of her. Before she could finish, the woman thrust one leg out in front, as if she were running, brought her arms down, and bent them, as well, like a runner. Ruben tried again. She wanted to draw the woman’s face. She wondered about the men in the class, whether this experience was erotic for them. It was erotic for Ruben; well, it was sort of erotic. It was new, it was brave. The woman was perfectly formed, with shapely, smooth thighs. Her breasts were rounded and firm, not very large. Ruben tried to draw the woman’s breasts.
Gregory passed behind her. Just the gesture, he said.
The woman changed poses again. Now she knelt on the plat-form. Ruben tried to imitate the line of her body with the charcoal.
As usual Gregory spoke to the other students, hardly ever to her. That’s fine, that’s fine, she heard him say. It was simply one of the loveliest events on earth for this woman to take off her clothes and stand before them, just so Ruben could try to draw her with charcoal. She wished Gregory would talk or listen to her. She had no way of saying it made her happy to draw this woman.
The woman sat on the platform, one leg stretched in front of her. Maybe the other students’ happiness would show in their drawings. Ruben thought Gregory might be a good teacher. When he had occasionally left the room, Ruben had told a few people her name. Once she’d complained to an older woman that Gregory didn’t know their names, and the woman, who had not said her own name, said, Names don’t matter.
The break was delayed. When they finally stopped, Ruben was elated and exhausted. She didn’t want to talk to Jeremiah and drink Sanka. At last the model stepped behind a screen, then strode out ahead of them, dressed in a sweater and jeans. Thank you, Ruben said as the woman passed, not knowing whether you were supposed to pretend you didn’t know it was the same person. Jeremiah ran toward Ruben and took her by the elbow. Come on, come on. She went. He said, Wasn’t that something? Wasn’t that just something? Here all term I’ve been—
But then he shook his head and didn’t say anything more as they hurried to the coffee shop in the cold. When they got there, Jeremiah stopped. Do you want anything?
—Not really.
He steered her around. I don’t want to break the mood.
In the empty classroom, they took off their coats and separated to look over their drawings. Gregory and the others came in.
Gregory asked each student to hang a drawing of the model. Ruben had one she rather liked. They all carried their sheets of paper to the usual wall and taped them with leftover bits of tape. When she looked around, Ruben was startled at how different everyone’s drawings were. A young man had made the model ugly, with strange angles and shadows. Two drawings looked stormy and elegant, as if made by complicated people, though they were the work of two women who looked like drugstore cashiers and wore big plastic earrings in bright colors.
Gregory walked, talking. The model had enlivened him, too. You don’t usually draw this way, he said to one woman, glancing from her drawing to her. Ruben was surprised that he knew whose it was. There’s more sense of the edge of the paper here. Do you see?
The woman obviously did not see, but he went on to the others. He praised a line, a tucked-in head, the curve of a neck. Some students had omitted the model’s hair. Ruben hadn’t thought not to draw her hair, and all her drawings included that grand ponytail.
But you, Gregory said, looking at Jeremiah. But you. Ruben thought Jeremiah’s drawings were the best he’d ever done. She imagined herself saying to Deborah, For once, what he drew didn’t look like a trolley. Then she thought how Deborah was upset, how they must hurry to her.
Gregory said Jeremiah’s drawing had a sumptuous curve. Ruben wouldn’t have called it sumptuous. Now Gregory stopped and turned to face Jeremiah, his back to Jeremiah’s drawing, as if he wanted to conceal it. By the way, he said, and Ruben saw her own feelings reflected in the body of one of the women with plastic earrings, who suddenly shifted as if some-thing frightening had entered the room.
—By the way, said Gregory, I know perfectly well what you’ve been up to all this time, and I think it’s truly stupid. Just thought you ought to know.
He moved on to the next drawing, which was Ruben’s. He was angry with Ruben, too, or else he was overcome with what he had just said. Nice line here, he mumbled.
—Do you mean the homework? said Jeremiah.
—Yes, that’s what I mean.
—I have some thoughts on your methods.
—I’d rather not hear them, Gregory said.
Jeremiah moved away from the group and walked to the window, glanced out, and returned. Of course the window was dark. There was time for one more drawing. Gregory said they could put together their own still life groups, if they wanted, or they could leave, if they preferred to do that. It was the last meeting of the class. All the students packed up and left. The older woman thanked Gregory and said she’d asked her hus-band to buy her an easel for Christmas. Ruben and Jeremiah walked silently out of the room and the building, to Jeremiah’s car. Easing out of the parking space, they were passed by a man on a bike.
—Was that Gregory? said Ruben. She wished—well, she had many wishes. She imagined Gregory telling his artist friends about two middle-aged idiots in his class. She started to laugh a little. She was going to say to Jeremiah, We are idiots (since she couldn’t seem to separate herself from Jeremiah), and her statement was going to make a difference. But Jeremiah rounded the corner sharply and there was a thump, and the sound of metal breaking, and then Jeremiah was cursing, pulling over to the curb right at the corner and jumping out.
Afraid to look, she followed him. He had knocked over Gregory and his bike. She started to scream, pressing her hands on her mouth, and then took her hands away and screamed some more. All she could do now was be loud. She couldn’t bear to look closely, but then she did. Gregory was standing up, leaning over the bicycle.
—Oh, man, said Jeremiah. You’re going to think I did that on purpose. How can I ever—? Are you all right? Shall we call the cops, or an ambulance?
—I’m all right, said Gregory. I need for you to get the fuck out of my life, is what I need.
—Of course I’ll pay for the bike! said Jeremiah.
Gregory was holding one arm with the other. My own stupid fault, he said quickly. I knew you couldn’t see me when I turned.
—Gregory, said Ruben, finally a grown-up—exaggerating the mommy tone—I know you’re angry. You should be angry. But you must let us help you. Is your arm hurt?
—I just scraped it on the ground. The back of the bicycle was hit, but I personally was not hit. He passed his hand over his face. Look, I just don’t need anything more from you two, okay? I really just want you to get the hell out of here.
—Whatever you say, said Jeremiah. Send me a bill for your new bike.
—Go to hell, said Gregory. Jeremiah got back into his car. Ruben stood there a while longer. Finally she said, I learned a lot from the course. I really did. And drawing the model was fantastic.
Then she got into the car. Five blocks closer to home, Jeremiah pulled over to the side of the street, shifted into park, rested his arms on the wheel, and hid his face in his hands. His shoulders shook. Then he sat up, shifted, and drove toward Ruben’s house.
—No, she said. I have to talk to Deborah.
—It’s late.
—Even so.
—No.
—Yes.
Deborah said, What are yo
u doing here? She wore her pink fuzzy bathrobe and slippers, and under it a light blue flannel nightgown. Ruben hugged her and rested her head on Deborah’s chest and cried a little. Then she knew why Jeremiah hadn’t wanted her to come. Maybe he wasn’t going to tell Deborah what had happened. He was afraid Ruben would. Well, she wouldn’t do that.
—If you’re here to comfort me, I don’t need it, said Deborah. I told Jeremiah not to tell you.
—But what did Janet say?
—Let’s not stand here in the hall, at least, said Deborah. Ruben phoned Harry while Deborah made Almond Sunset tea. Ruben thought Jeremiah would go upstairs, but he stayed and drank tea.
—You’ll be peeing all night, Deborah said.
—I do anyway, after that coffee.
—We didn’t have coffee tonight, said Ruben.
—Oh, right.
—Why not? Deborah said.
—We were too overcome, said Ruben. The model.
—What was she like?
—She was naked.
—I’m sure you liked that, Deborah said to Jeremiah. He was warming his hands on his mug. He drank the tea quickly, even though it was scalding. Ruben considered that Jeremiah’s tongue might be calloused from many hot drinks. She found herself, for a moment, wondering how such a tongue might feel inside one’s mouth or stroking one’s clitoris. She stared hard at Deborah to dispel the late-night thought. She had never been attracted to Jeremiah. Now, she found herself assuming he had run into Gregory’s bike on purpose. Yet surely he hadn’t. She argued with herself, looking at Deborah.
Deborah was talking, telling the history of the last two days as it pertained to Janet Grey. Janet had waved from a passing car, but did not stop. Janet had called and left a message with Rose for Deborah to call back. Deborah had called and Janet had said she couldn’t talk right then but would call Deborah later.
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