Whatever Lola Wants

by George Szanto

  He eased onto the Drive north of George Washington Bridge. Three-quarters of the cars, buses, and trucks from Jersey turned south toward midtown so traffic northward flowed smoothly. The snow had thickened. Worse than the grayish-white stuff coming down was the splashed-up sludge from tires in front of him, next to him. At least he’d replaced the wipers back in December and filled the windshield spray reservoir last week. With his fingers he searched the radio for some listenable music and found the Beatles singing “Eleanor Rigby.” The song ended and the DJ reminded his listeners how lucky they were to be tuned in, it’d be an all-Beatles show till noon. Okay, C.C. could handle that. Though he’d lose the station well before then.

  Ricardo was the greatest Beatles fan in the world; anyway, that’s how he described himself. Long ago, in Santiago, he’d learned his English from pop songs. He’d cut his syntax teeth on Elvis, got his grammar toilet trained by the Stones, and conjugated his virginity with John, George, Paul, and Ringo. From them he got all the language background he needed, he liked to say, to come up to the US, get a brilliant doctorate in biology with expertise in freshwater invertebrates, go back home and become full professor of biology by thirty-four. Not enough genius, his wife, Natalia, had taunted him, to keep him down under the water staring at fishes with his mouth shut. What kind of honored scientist shoots his mouth off daily at campus rallies and civic forums in support of Allende and those Communists? At last, with Allende elected democratically and popularly, Ricardo figured he could take a one-year leave from Valparaiso and accept the long-offered professorship at Boston University. Natalia would not join him, their sons were still at the lyceum, the city, in fact the whole country, was becoming increasingly dangerous with that Communist in power, how could Ricardo even think of going to the US right now? Ricardo had wanted the boys to spend a couple of semesters in an American school, let them see how Chile was viewed from outside the country, improve their English. Natalia said no no no. Ricardo left anyway, his main reason Natalia herself. This much Bobbie, then Ricardo himself, had told C.C.

  C.C. crossed over into Connecticut halfway through the White Album. Just before Stamford the station crackled apart under the weight of static. The snow seemed thinner now, the traffic lighter, but for some reason C.C. found it hard to maintain even fifty-five miles per hour.

  •

  “Noted with a father’s concern.” Lola’s eyes teased, but with delight.

  “Not as if I can do much about it,” I said.

  •

  After the Beatles, only Mozart was worth listening to. C.C. flicked over to tape, slid a cassette in, and let Pablo Casals’s cello glide him into the calmness of mind he needed before allowing Thea back in there. He was playing his own cello less and less, his courses demanding too much time. He’d thought about moving over to the music department, studying cello again. But knew he wasn’t very good, not compared with others his age who’d given their lives to the instrument. He’d keep his cello for private pleasure. Except over the past few months he’d found his pleasure mostly in the sack with Thea. He did little these days except study and screw. Sometimes he ate a little, too. But with her he had found new versions of his old Moments, the embrace, near to literal, of a piece of time separated from all larger time, a Moment of sheer joyous self-certainty.

  For a while the Beatles had kept Thea at bay. He’d needed that kind of psychic timespan at least till he’d put a few miles of highway between himself and last night. Possibly he’d now seen the last of her, which would be both a relief and a sadness. Her arguments had challenged him in his politics as neither books nor speeches could. She almost always spoke as the revolutionary she claimed to be: if one agreed with her first principles, rooted in an absolute faith in the total corruption of all structures of American power and its debasing influence on the minds of many, then the logic of her revolutionary stance was beyond response. But C.C. couldn’t buy her starting point—nothing is absolute, he argued, context is everything. He had learned this well and deep from Bobbie, and he believed it. For him Thea’s value other than for their shared bed pleasure had been her ability to sharpen his own thinking, to deepen the solidity of the ground he stood on. Though unable ever to agree with him politically, Thea had respected C.C. for this.

  Respected him enough to arrive back in the apartment at three in the morning and lay out what she’d just done? She and two others in her cell had firebombed the downtown draft center. It was also possible their cell had now been subverted. It was certainly possible she herself might have been seen. No, nobody injured, hurting some low-level foot soldier moved no revolution forward. Now she had to go deep underground. She told him this because she trusted him. But he had to understand why she was disappearing from his life. He’d argued with her, don’t just vanish. Give yourself up, you can pay for this one-time small crime, live a normal life again. No, she said, the crime wasn’t hers, the crime belonged to a government that sent its young men to die for no purpose. What she’d done was fully intended, and carefully planned. For over three hours he had tried to convince her to rethink her future. And failed. Long before he left the apartment she was gone.

  Casals would not have approved of bombing a draft center. Neither did C.C. He was deeply opposed to the draft, had himself fought against American involvement in the war, had personally lucked into an ultra-low number, had not so long ago picketed outside that self-same draft center. He hadn’t reported her act or told anyone she was running because his trust in law enforcement institutions was low? Yes, when it came to the sites of the corruption Thea railed against, New York’s finest and the fibbies were luminaries. If they questioned him he’d tell only the truth—she arrived while he slept and was gone in a blink.

  By Hartford the snow had fizzled out. Halfway, making good time. In two and half hours in the banquet room of Spregham’s, the luncheon would finish. As dessert and coffee awaited, the honcho editor of The Patriot would call Roberta Feyerlicht to the podium and present her with the 1974 Samuel Adams Award for Poetry, the highest honor offered by, jointly, the New England Poetry Association and the magazine, the most respected annual prize in the country for a single poem. Bobbie’s poem was called “Allende in Socialist America.” She had written it for Ricardo.

  C.C. crossed into Massachusetts. A few miles farther, just past the Sturbridge exit, the traffic slowed. Suddenly he was creeping through a construction zone. The oncoming lanes seemed even worse. On both the east and westbound sides the state of Massachusetts was widening the highway. 11:20. If the construction ended quickly he’d be okay. On his left a huge semi crowded him, they barely fit alongside each other.

  C.C. felt for Ricardo, whose sons could not leave Chile. He feared they would publicly oppose Pinochet, be arrested, get disappeared. Well, Tomás possibly not, he was a mild kid. But Fernando, at sixteen and younger than his brother but as tall, broader, a charmer with no fear in him, could easily get into trouble. Fernando had accompanied Ricardo to rallies, and campaign battles for Allende, with increasing fervour.

  Ricardo had had letters from them only twice in the last seven months. They hadn’t mentioned his weekly letters to them. Perhaps they could not write more; certainly their phone calls would be monitored, they were after all their father’s sons. Perhaps, because they were also their mother’s sons, they would be safe— Natalia’s father was closely allied to Pinochet. Would the son of a bitch protect them? He had heard nothing from Natalia since halfway through his first year at Boston University, when she had told him she wanted a divorce. He begged her to wait till he returned …

  But then Allende was assassinated and Ricardo could not return to Chile. He knew what would happen, stories from friends who after the putsch had managed to escape were clear: interrogation, torture, and at last, with luck, death. Or while alive a fall from a plane into the sea. So he accepted a full-time position at the university. They were delighted to have such a distinguished marine researcher and scholar as a member of the faculty. He mi
ssed his sons dearly. In Boston he met the poet Roberta Feyerlicht.

  C.C. wanted to get out of the car, get a sense of what lay ahead. But the traffic never came to a full stop. Slim chance of making it now. Another few hundred yards, a hundred more. Did they seem to be speeding up? Then steady. He looked over to the oncoming side again which gave him a clear view of a semi lurching off the edge, first the rear trailer then the front and finally the cab, dropped with elegance, grace even, off the roadway and glided onto its side, a full ninety-degree downslide in a second or two. Stupidity, laying down a new lane on an overcrowded highway. Impossible to stop here, to help the poor bastard in the downed truck. And yes, the speed on their side had picked up. He reached the Mass Pike at 12:20. No hope of arriving in time.

  One advantage of snow, heavy traffic and the occasional eighteen-wheeler flipping sideways, Thea had for a moment departed from his brain, gone as much from the present as from his apartment. He pressed the accelerator hard, the roadway dry now, space opening in front of him. Thea returned. Would her absence turn the apartment into a home? Nope. Poor dumb Thea, never again able to have a room, a house, an apartment to call home. Just like C.C. himself, right? For now, anyway. Some day he’d have a real home. Like Bobbie. Was her home becoming Ricardo’s? Because, C.C. suddenly understood, Ricardo had no home either.

  He passed cars and sped ahead, seventy, seventy-five. His car shook and rattled. The ring road now, on toward Boston. The Cambridge exit, onto Memorial Drive.

  The miracle of the day, a parking space on Mass Ave directly in front of Spregham’s. And over forty minutes left on the meter. He rushed to the front door. Inside a waiter pointed to the banquet room. C.C. slid in past seated diners. Behind a podium on the head table stood Bobbie. She wore a wide-brimmed shiny black leather hat and a denim jacket. She was reading.

  C.C. had read the Allende poem several times. It wasn’t his all-time favorite Bobbie poem, but she’d written it at the right moment, the staccato pattern of the words set against her political-scientific imagery set a tone that compelled her audiences’ political attention. She’d sold it to The Patriot for four hundred dollars. The Samuel Adams Prize was worth five thousand. A lot of money for a poem, Ricardo declared when he’d called C.C. secretly, to tell him of the ceremony. On the q.t. because Bobbie was playing down all this foofaraw, accepting the prize only to make Americans aware that the US had participated in, possibly perpetrated, the murder of Allende and the legitimization of Pinochet.

  Roberta Feyerlicht, his Bobbie, neared the end of the poem. It reminded him of Thea. But no, her rants might have used similar words but their meanings differed widely. Or did they? He had Thea to thank for his ability to think clearly. For Thea the need was control: to control the world and make it right, and good, and decent. Bobbie would see how some pieces of the world might fit together, shape them according to their possibilities—

  The banquet room erupted into applause, men and women on their feet, an immense ovation. For a poem. C.C. smiled. He worked his way through the crowd to embrace Bobbie.

  •

  Lola stared down, sat arms folded. She said nothing.

  I said, “You okay?”

  She took a few seconds before speaking, her words directed at the piece of cloud. “Did our country really murder this Allende?”

  I phrased my response carefully. “Many believe so.”

  She looked over at me. “Do you?”

  I nodded.

  She sighed. “I know I have no memory. But I have a sense of things. How could we have killed the president of another country?”

  Ten years between Lola’s death, and Allende’s. Now forty years since Lola’s death. Lola, with no memory of the years she’d lived. Memories only of what I was telling her. “I don’t know,” I said.

  Now she nodded. “Tell me about Theresa.”

  “Theresa?”

  “She gets angry. I don’t understand anger. And besides, I need to change the subject. You’re depressing me.”

  I know I shouldn’t be surprised at a God being depressed by my tale. All unusual. Take her somewhere else, she was asking. I searched for a Theresa memory.

  •

  4. (1974)

  After thirty-one hours of pushing, what little remained of Theresa’s brain knew she had to find a different strategy. Crazy to bear children after thirty. No, not fair, the twins had come out easily enough. Just two years ago. But this one! He was in there, either him or a balloon filled with sawdust and cement, and it had to be male, she’d not felt such tenacity before. Sarah’s obstinacy had shown itself only after her first scream. This one she’d have to cheat out. Or die trying. Oh stop the theatrics, Theresa. Find your tactics.

  How about an enema up into the womb, flush him out? The little clinker. She’d battled enough clinkers on the piste, dozens of tournaments with her foil finding its target. Where in heaven is that nurse!

  How about that, turning the birth canal into a strip. The fetus had her dead-ended. But not for long. Better be soon. A fencing strip with zones in place. So little strength left—

  Far away she heard someone—Milton? Yes—whispering, Keep pushing, Tessa …Thank you, Milton. How could I live without you, Milton—

  Push. Thrust. Dangerous back in here, no room to maneuver, like fighting your way out of the bottom of a sock. She, the one with her back to the end of the piste, deep in her own zone three, bad place to be for so long, hours and hours.

  Doesn’t this place have a midwife?!

  In competition, matched with a woman of her own class, she had never lost, not once. Damned if she’d lose today. Though that first time Milton had seen her, in Lyon, she’d come close. Nervous because Milton was watching from the stands. He had hitchhiked from Freiburg to see her fence, arrived the morning of the bout. They’d only had half an hour together before she needed to make ready. She’d caught a glimpse of him in the stands, corner of her eye, just for a moment, yet it proved enough distraction to give her opponent the blink of an advantage. Concentration flashed back but it took her near the full four minutes allotted to score her five touchés.

  Theresa and Milton were together every other weekend over their European summer. That fall back in the US, Cambridge, they married, three days before her first philosophy class. They’d found a small apartment and moved in. Neither city life nor abstract thought appealed to Milton. But they were for the moment a large part of Theresa’s daily existence and he wanted little more, for himself, than to be another large part of Theresa’s life. Milton spent some of the autumn with his father at the Grange up in northern Vermont, harvesting, closing the fields down for winter. He’d return there in the spring, help with the planting.

  Theresa, on those weekends they spent at the Grange and later the summers when she could study all day in their large room, became entranced by the place. And she adored Milton’s father, Jerry, something of a moral philosopher himself. His arguments were fully formed, and clear. Over the years her own jargon fell away. The precision of her thinking increased accordingly. Thanks to Jerry. Jerry was Milton’s gift to her. One more thing to thank Milton for.

  Jerry had reinforced for her what she instinctly knew: when your tactics aren’t working, reassess your strategy. She sensed his lesson with great clarity right now, pressing, thrusting, succeeding! working the little clinker out into zone two.

  Winter of that first year had been hard on Milton, a man who needed to be doing specific, immediate things. Sitting in their tiny living room watching her read, make notes, get her papers written, lucid ideas where there’d been only blank space; right for Theresa, impossible for Milton. Insufficient too was keeping house in their tiny space. Though it did mean Theresa didn’t have to, she could get on with her work.

  Should he be studying too? Improve his German to continue the work he’d started in Freiburg? Didn’t feel right. How about getting a job? But they were eking their way through on Theresa’s handsome scholarship. Studying what? “Think it thro
ugh, Milton. What do you care most about?”

  “You.”

  She nuzzled his cheek. “You can’t study me.”

  “I could. I will, all my life.”

  How could he have known this, already then? Ha! Another thrust and she had the little clinker out to her zone one, footwork easier here, didn’t have to watch her back. Now! Accelerate and hit! There, a fast riposte— Yeah, got him back to his zone one! His parry, not enough, and she knew the strategy was working. She felt her forehead being wiped. Sweating that much? Bad form to sweat with foil in hand. Was the clinker studying her? No, that was Milton.

  “What else, Milton? What means the most to you?”

  “Probably,” he said, “the Grange.”

  “You can’t study the Grange. What about the Grange?”

  “You know, making sure it works okay. Better than okay. As perfectly as possible.”

  “Works? Makes money?”

  “Enough to support those who work it.”

  “You need to firm up your plans to study agriculture. Simple as that.”

  His brow furrowed. “All agriculture?”

  “Some. What you do or what you could do at the Grange. To make enough out of it to make sure it lives on.” Yes! There on the clinker’s face, the same furrow. His father’s son.

  “Something like agricultural economics?”

  “Something like that.”

  He researched agricultural schools across New England and chose the University of New Hampshire. Was accepted, a two-year diploma at the Ag School, microeconomic analysis his area of specialization. He borrowed money from his father and from the government.