Beautiful Revolutionary

by Laura Elizabeth Woollett

  3.

  ‘Si vous avez des questions, demandez-moi en français,’ she tells the class when they ask about her black eye, and she smiles at the ducking of heads, the fluttering of dictionaries. Last period of the week doesn’t mean a free pass, and they know her well enough to know this, that they’re expected to keep translating and conjugating until the final bell. She looks out the window at the milky sky and thinks of the small stretch of hours between now and total darkness.

  A girl raises her hand: red-faced, white-blond, non-Temple. It’s not Evelyn’s custom to have favorites, and if the handful of Temple kids she teaches get better grades — the Luce boys; the Bellows girls; Su-mi Jones, Jim’s adopted Korean daughter — it’s because Temple kids work harder. ‘Oui, Jill.’ Evelyn folds her arms as the girl stammers something about Madame Lynden and her œil de beurre noir. She is still Madame Lynden. She still wears the ring Lenny Lynden gave her. No need to draw attention. Evelyn turns to the class and answers Jill’s question matter-of-factly:

  ‘Je me suis pris la portière de la voiture.’

  To demonstrate, she mimes opening a car door, hitting it against her face, and reeling back. The kids look suitably wide-eyed, and she has a reckless urge to toy with them further. ‘C’est ce qui arrive quand je ne bois pas mon café le matin.’ There are more blank stares as they try to figure out her joke, if it even is a joke, and she allows herself a brisk laugh before taking out her chalk and breaking the sentence down: C’est. Ce. Qui. Arrive. This is what happens when I don’t drink my morning coffee. I hit my face on the car door. Do you believe me? How would you express this sentence with ‘Madame Lynden’ as the subject …?

  At the end of the hour, Evelyn hangs back at her desk, chiming out the occasional, ‘Au revoir,’ and, ‘Bon week-end.’ She is well liked by her students; they don’t leave in a rush, and many glance back at her before filing out the door. It’s only once she’s alone that Evelyn finds herself clutching her desk like a life raft, dizzied by a sudden wave of exhaustion. But the wave breaks, and a moment later she has gathered up her papers and slung her purse; she is twenty-three years old, able-bodied and in love, and these things are stronger than fatigue.

  There have been changes in Evelyn’s life since Lenny stopped being part of it, some of which she dwells on, and some of which she doesn’t. She doesn’t dwell on her diminished sleep. She doesn’t dwell on the way Su-mi Jones ignores her wave from across the parking lot. She doesn’t dwell on her inferior car: an ugly little red Volvo, purchased second-hand from Sister Diane. She does dwell on Jim’s generosity in facilitating the purchase of the Volvo; on the beauty of a relationship grounded in generosity, but not indulgence. As she drives toward the Temple’s rectangular form, she dwells on its beauty; a beauty that’s entirely secular to her eyes, despite the cross on the roof, the sign proclaiming:

  PEOPLES TEMPLE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

  The first thing she sees when she brings the Volvo around the back of the redwood and plate-glass building is Jim’s blue Pontiac, trunk aloft. The next is a tall yet feeble female figure toiling over it. In the pale sunlight, the woman’s upswept hair is more gold than ginger, fraying slightly at the seams, but Evelyn would know that hair anywhere, the dip of shame and fizzing of defiance that comes from looking at it.

  ‘Oh, Rosaline.’ Evelyn hears her own voice ring out, clear and innocuous, as she cuts the engine and steps onto the gravel. ‘You look like you’re struggling there.’

  Maybe the older woman flinches. Maybe it’s only a trick of the light. Either way, Evelyn doesn’t let it stop her from bustling over to the trunk and placing her hands just above Rosaline’s, on the corners of the box she’s straining to lift. Rosaline looks up in a daze, her face mere inches from Evelyn’s, and her wide eyes seem to widen further, her thin lips to disappear into the general whiteness of her face. ‘Oh,’ Rosaline gasps soundlessly, blinking fast like she’s trying to erase some painful vision, and it dawns on Evelyn that perhaps her own face is the painful thing, Jim’s mark beneath her eye. Hurt me. Yet within seconds Rosaline has looked down and drawn herself up, and in a steady voice she concedes, ‘Thank you, Eve.’

  ‘Evelyn.’

  ‘Evelyn. I’m sorry.’ And Rosaline does sound so apologetic that Evelyn immediately feels like a bitch. ‘If you can just a grip on that side? Oof. Who’da figured dolls and teddy bears could be so heavy—’

  ‘For the orphans,’ Evelyn doesn’t ask so much as purr.

  ‘The Health Department people, they surprised me with a whole ’nother collection. Really I wasn’t expect—’ Rosaline halts as they push through the glass doors and Evelyn steals a glance at her face: ghost-pale, careworn, twitchy as a mouse. There’ve been days when she has looked at Jim’s wife with envy — her silky-bright kaftan dresses, her flower-stalk neck, her lacquered beehive in profile giving her the appearance of a blond Queen Nefertiti — but today isn’t one of them. ‘— Expecting such generosity.’

  ‘Of course, you have a lot of influence over there.’ Evelyn intends the words to be complimentary, yet they fall as flat as a bad joke.

  They don’t speak as they inch past the glass cabinets and through the light-filled sanctuary with its covered swimming pool and many echoes. Soft voices and clangs can be heard from the kitchen, but it’s a slow time of day: too late for lunchtime traffic, too early for the after-work rush. When at last they reach the storeroom, Rosaline is blotch-cheeked and shaky. Evelyn looks away as Rosaline catches her breath and rubs her back; embarrassed for her and also, to her own shame, faintly smug.

  ‘This is impressive,’ Evelyn enthuses, crouching down to peek in the box. She frowns at a crude black woolen doll with clown lips and a minstrel’s outfit. ‘Well … Maybe not this.’

  ‘Oh.’ Rosaline frowns too, still clutching her back. ‘I used to have one of those as a girl.’ She shakes her head. ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘Why don’t I get the next box,’ Evelyn suggests, in her best attempt at a deferential tone. ‘You can hold the door or something.’

  Rosaline doesn’t dignify this with an answer, just flaps her hands and marches on out. Evelyn slinks behind; if Rosaline wants to play the martyr, that’s fine with her. Jim has told her about Rosaline’s bad back — one of the many reasons they have ceased marital relations — yet she thinks better of mentioning this as they heft the next box from the trunk. ‘I’ll ask the youth choir to sort through these tonight. There’s no reason they should go to the Gift Wrapping Committee any later than Monday.’

  ‘Ohh, noo,’ Rosaline protests, her vowels comically rounded. ‘I’ll ask the boys.’

  Evelyn feels a flash of anxiety at this reference to Jim’s sons, sensitive-eyed coltish pre-teens as unknown to her as creatures in a paddock seen through the window of a speeding car. Perhaps Rosaline feels anxious, too, since everything about her face seems to either twitch or droop before she starts laboring with renewed vigor.

  A copper-brown coupé turns in to the parking lot. Both women look up to watch Jim hunch out with two non-Temple men. Evelyn flicks through her mental log of appointments: The Prosperity Gazette, Friday 4pm.

  ‘… A place all people can call their own.’ Jim is gesturing at the building. ‘I mean that, all. Shelter for the cold, food for the hungry, employment for the unemployed. Proselytizing, that’s not important to me. I’m very down-to-earth. I plan to feed hundreds this Christmas and make sure no child, county-over, goes without a gift.’

  ‘And your services? Is it true that you claim to heal cancer, blindness …?’

  ‘Healing, that’s just a small part of what we do.’ Gentle as Jim’s voice is, Evelyn can tell he doesn’t like the question — that miniscule sharp note only a lover could perceive, or perhaps a wife. ‘Every Sunday, we discuss current affairs. We got individuals testifying. Activities for the young people, music … Children’s choir, they’ll be here in a little whiles, rehearsing for the
Christmas show. Cutest thing you’ll ever see,’ he says mildly. ‘I don’t like to talk about healings too much. Gives the impression, for some, we don’t believe in medical science. Fact is, we got a wonderful system of care homes. Drug rehabilitation program. My wife, Rosaline, she works for the State Health Department inspecting — well, she can probably tell you better herself.’

  Jim shines a smile in Rosaline’s direction, a smile that includes Evelyn, but impersonally, like a Labrador dropping a tennis ball at the feet of a stranger. Evelyn sees Rosaline’s face become smooth and serene, the face of the woman who stands onstage with Jim on Sunday mornings. ‘That’s Mrs. Jones?’ The reporter tilts his head at Rosaline, and there’s no sign he’s even seen Evelyn. ‘Say, Reverend … could we get a picture of you two together?’

  Jim smile twists. ‘Sure, Burt. If Rosaline don’t mind.’

  Rosaline demurs, ‘Oh. Well. Y’know, a picture of Jim and the boys’d be nicer. They’ll be back from school any min—’

  ‘We’d love a shot of just the two of you first, Mrs. Jones.’

  Rosaline blushes at her feet, pats her beehive, shakes her head; accepts. Evelyn feels her insides ripple like silk, watching Rosaline creep toward the men, the way she allows herself to be directed, shoulder encircled by Jim. The way her pink-and-white coloring contrasts with Jim’s tan and blue-black; her doe-eyes with his Asiatic squint; her close-lipped smile with his wide grin. Evelyn thinks what a pity it is that the photographs won’t be in color. She thinks of getting some copies made for sale after Sunday services. Thinks of everything, except what she would look like, standing in Rosaline’s place.

  4.

  ‘Terra. Short for Teresa.’

  That’s what the blonde says, meeting Lenny in broad daylight outside the shitty diner where Brother Ike used to take him for chicken sandwiches and bottomless coffee. She’s wearing the same coat from last night, brown suede and shearling, and, when she takes that off in the red faux-leather booth, a hand-knit sweater the same white as her teeth. She smiles a lot. This, along with the blunt fact of her beauty, makes Lenny feel like he’s the butt of some cruel joke.

  ‘Well, short for Little Terror, actually. That’s what Daddy used to call me. I was just the craziest kid, running around screaming, playing drums with Mom’s cookware. One time, I got into Daddy’s case files and crayoned all over them! He’s a prosecutor, y’know. But at home he was just the biggest softie. I never got spanked or anything.’

  She gazes at Lenny expectantly: surf-colored eyes, sand-colored hair. He looks at his menu.

  ‘What I guess I’m saying … I wasn’t running away from, y’know, some abusive family situation. My olds aren’t bad people. Daddy even ran for the state assembly back in ’62 — Democrat of course — only he lost to this dude Theo Hanson; y’know the one who did that investigation after the Watts riots?’ The blonde folds her arms over her menu. ‘Anyway. It’s just, as soon as I hit puberty, it’s like I couldn’t breathe. Everybody treated me different. And I don’t mean just guys; but, well … guys.’

  The blonde leans further forward, lowers her voice confidingly.

  ‘I guess you don’t wanna hear about all the guys, but most of them only want one thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re thirteen. It’s just one guy after another trying to get in your pants and never anywhere deep-er—’ On ‘deeper’, a giggle bursts from her lips, which makes Lenny wish he had a shell to duck into. Duck and cover, like Bert the Turtle. The night he met Evelyn, at the party thrown by her many female housemates, they’d had a seemingly profound conversation about those nuclear drills they all went through as kids, ducking under their elementary-school desks. ‘Ronnie and me, we were together two years. He even gave me this pre-engagement ring, real pretty blue topaz with cubic zirconias. But retrospectfully, he wasn’t interested in me. Me-me. I was just like some fuck-toy for him and soon as he saw the sea of pussy in Haight-Ashbury … well, he didn’t give a thought to throwing me away.’

  The blonde’s delivery is unsentimental. Still, Lenny feels bad for not feeling worse for her. He’s glad when the wide-waisted waitress shows up with her pen and pad.

  ‘Oh! What’s good here?’ The blonde doesn’t even glance at her menu.

  ‘Umm.’ Lenny shrugs. ‘I like the chicken sandwich.’

  ‘Two chicken sandwiches. And, um, iced tea? Two iced teas?’ As soon as the waitress shuffles off, the blonde leans back and goes right on with her story. ‘… Don’t get me wrong, I had fun with the free love thing. I mean, when the grass is good and it’s a good-looking guy, there’s nothing better, right? Trouble is when the dude starts ordering you around like a maid or wants to pimp you out to a motorcycle gang on something.’ She sucks on her lips and catches him solemnly in those blue-green eyes. What color were Evelyn’s? It’s a pop quiz from his broken heart, which he immediately aces: gray. ‘We had this commune near Modesto. It was a pretty bad scene by the end. This little chick Merri, some dude broke her jaw. All her bottom incisors totally caved into the bone. You have beautiful teeth, by the way.’

  ‘… Thanks.’ Lenny rubs his jaw, raw and pallid as a freshly plucked chicken.

  ‘Sorry. I used to wear a retainer. Did you ever have one? Seventh grade, worst year of my life.’ Even worse than the bikers? Lenny wonders. ‘Anyway, I ended up leaving with this older dude, Rex. He was stationed in Hawaii in his navy days; said he’d take me. It’s stupid, but I really thought he was different. He used to sing me ‘Aloha Oe’ … I called him ‘King’ …’

  Lenny wishes the iced tea would come.

  ‘I guess that’s a warning sign, a guy wants to be called ‘King’?’ The blonde rolls her eyes. ‘He wasn’t Elvis, that’s for sure. Have you seen what speed does to teeth? Well, they weren’t anything like yours. And he didn’t have your nice blue eyes, either. One was all squinty from this fight he was in where — but anyway, looks aren’t important. Socialism taught me that.’ She raises her chin prettily, as though to invite Lenny to admire her full-frontal. ‘I know the attention I get for my looks isn’t the real deal. But I was so desperate to believe I was something special, I didn’t care. Y’know, I actually thought Rex was some up-front charitable guy ’cause he didn’t want me screwing johns, only blowjobs?’

  Maybe Lenny would feel worse for her if it wasn’t for his sense of being totally out of touch. It strikes him that she’s a different breed from the girls he’s used to. Marianne Glover, his sophomore-year girlfriend, had taken months of full-clothed necking before she agreed to go to bed with him, and even Evelyn had appearances she liked to maintain: telling her housemates he’d fallen asleep in her room while listening to records, for instance, and always making sure they were dressed by a certain time on weekends, lest her parents visit.

  ‘Um … how old did you say you were?’

  ‘Nineteen? Twenty on February four.’ She laughs. ‘Aquarius. What’s your sign?’

  ‘January sixteen. I mean … Capricorn.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. I can see that. You’re quiet and kinda aloof.’ She smiles at him in that disarming way, like she already knows him and is just remembering the details. ‘Rex was a Leo. Always wanting his ego stroked. And he had this thing about self-sufficiency. Started saying we should get our own boat and sail to Hawaii like explorers. So Rex found this dude on Lake Mendocino with an old yacht. It had some damage to the deck and stuff, but we figured we’d camp out and work on it. Rex said I could name it ‘Crystal Ship’, paint it up any colors I wanted …’

  There’s a clatter from the kitchen and Lenny tenses up, though he’s still several hours from his next shift at the Silver State. She doesn’t seem to notice. ‘Two weeks, maybe three, we were on the lake? My memory’s kinda hazy, ha-ha. The weather wasn’t so good, but there was this bait store up the road; the dude there used to let me bag jerky and candy bars just for smiling at him right.’ In demonstration, she smiles just right, and Lenny feels his
face glow, despite himself. ‘We had this primo acid. Called it Rainbow Snake ’cause you’d see rainbows snaking everywhere. Only downside? It gave us the nastiest acid belly.’ She lolls her tongue. ‘Last time me and Rex tripped together, we were squatting in the bushes all night! I remember we had this campfire going near the yacht, and looking through these branches at these colors grooving outta the flames: reds, purples, blues, greens, better than Fourth of July …’

  Last time Lenny dropped acid was back in the spring, after handing in his senior thesis, ‘Capital Punishment and the Glorification of Violence in American Society’. Evelyn and her friend Mary-Kay stuck with wine and weed, but were a benevolent presence, adjusting lights and flipping records, helping him put on his shoes before he went out to touch the night flowers and gawk at the gods in the sky.

  Lenny doesn’t know which fact, of all these, seems most unreal to him now.

  ‘I guess I shouldn’t blame Rex for bailing when he did. All those sirens, I mean … he had a record. But it messed me up: everything’s cool one second and next second the boat’s on fire.’ The blonde isn’t smiling anymore but shaking her head sadly. ‘I’ve had trips go bad, but never like that. I’m lucky I didn’t end up in some loony bin — Sorry, “asylum”.’ She looks up at Lenny so deliberately he wonders if she’s implying something about his mental state. ‘I heard about your alternate service, by the way, and just wanna say I think that’s so great. Most guys I know? They only put on the peace act ’cause they don’t want their asses on the line. They don’t give a shit about helping people. Not like you.’

  Lenny senses she’s flirting with him, but he’s more irritated than flattered. He purses his lips until she resumes her monologue.

  ‘I don’t remember much about that night in lock-up. Gene says I was screaming a lot: for “King”, for “God”; I guess I thought I was dying … You know, any other cop would’ve left me for dead. But Brother Gene, soon as he realized I had no one? He sent his wife to pick me up. In the middle of the night!’ Her words come in a breathless rush, and Lenny is relieved that she now seems more interested in the absent Brother Gene than in him. ‘I don’t even know if my own folks would’ve taken me in like Gene and Joya, no questions asked. Cleaned me up. Clothed me. Fed me. You’re probably used to how Temple people are, but I just assumed there’d be a catch.’ She makes a high-pitched sound, more yelp than giggle. ‘Gene, poor Genie. He was so embarrassed! I don’t wanna gossip but … let’s just say he’s a real gentleman. Said if I really wanted to make it up, why not come to church Sunday? Well, I was never big on church, but …’