by May Sarton
Caroline shuts her eyes, much to my dismay. Perhaps she has fallen asleep. A truck comes roaring past and after the noise has stopped she says, “All that seems far away. Thanks for telling me, though! I’ll try to remember who it was I managed to be all those years. But now,” she says quietly, “I am somewhere else and enjoying making no effort at all.”
“I must go,” I say. “I mustn’t tire you out.”
“Oh, not before you have told me about the shop! I’m dying to know. You must indulge me, Harriet, so I can think about it after you leave.”
“What can I say about the shop? It’s an absolutely new, rich, and terrifying world.”
“Terrifying?”
“Yes, because I am not ready for all the lives that pour in. It’s what I wanted, Caroline, it’s what I dreamed of, people talking, women coming in and meeting each other.”
“Then why terrifying?”
It takes me a second to find the answer. “I’m finding out that my life with Vicky—such a good life it was—was walled in somehow. I had no idea what a lot has been going on, what problems these women face.”
Caroline smiles. “Vicky herself was a kind of castle, wasn’t she? Way up on a hill of her own invention, the publishing house.”
“Yes, exactly. So we really only saw people rather like us. Vicky never considered herself part of any group, perhaps even a little superior to any group, such as feminists, for instance, and, God knows,” I hesitate before the word, then utter it, “lesbians.”
“And I can imagine lesbians and feminists flock to your store. All to the good, I should think. You are brave to do this, Harriet. I admire your undiminished zest for life, your courage.”
“No, not really. I’m afraid of all the labels and the way women talk about everything. A young woman introduced her friend as ‘my lover.’ I was dumbfounded. I didn’t like it, you see. I’m terrified because all my defenses are being beaten down, or simply disregarded,” and I laugh. “I am an old fool. Oh dear,” and I laugh again, “all I can think of is Philip Cabot saying of his brother Richard, ‘There are fools, there are damn fools, and there’s my brother Richard’! I’m brother Richard.”
“Hardly. If I remember, brother Richard had outraged Philip by insisting that doctors must tell terminally ill patients the truth. He did so and made at least one painful mistake. He told a woman she was dying so she left her job, put her mother in a nursing home, and it all turned out to be a mistake.”
“But really he was right; I mean Richard was. Peter told you, after all.”
“I wanted to know, so I asked him. But he has not told me how long I have. How can he know?” She seems at the moment so much her old self that it is hard to imagine that she is dying, and again I feel the wall go up inside me, the wall against knowing something I do not want to know, that seems too painful to take in.
But Caroline changes the subject mercifully. “One thing about dying is that one can say anything, ask anything. One is immune from all the usual discretions and social necessities.” She is now perceptibly a little out of breath and I know I must leave soon. “We’ve never talked about loving women. Did you feel guilt?”
“No. You see Vicky swept me off my feet. It all seemed part of her world, into which I was being taken by love, passionate love.”
“I have more than once been in love with a woman,” Caroline says. “I didn’t feel guilty. As you say, it seemed so natural. Why I am telling you this is because I think all of us have it in us to be moved by the same sex and for a woman it is very different from loving a man passionately. It is not a choice, one or the other. Not for me, at any rate. Life is always more complex than we want to make it.”
I am listening with all my being. While she has been talking, she has been looking away from me at the flowers. Now she turns and looks right into my eyes. “And so perhaps is dying, but Harriet,” she says, “don’t be terrified. The open door may be terrifying but it does lead somewhere. Right now it is leading you into unknown territory, just as dying is leading me. Let us rejoice.”
“You marvelous woman. I must go now and let you rest.” I lay the books on the table beside her. “A few books just in case you get bored and want a little distraction.”
“I’m never bored,” she says at once, “only I do get tired. I hate to say goodbye but, yes, it is time we parted.” And she adds as I bend to kiss her, “Come back soon.”
But I know in my heart that this may be goodbye. And I know, too, as I sit in the car, unable to leave the place, the street, Caroline, just yet, that she has said what she did to support me, to say I should accept myself and the world around me, the multiple lives, all the doors opening, and not close them ever again.
It is strange after that moment of truth and illumination that when I get home there is an anonymous letter among all the spring book catalogs from the university presses. When I lay it down I am shivering. It reads:
Dear manager or whoever you are,
This was a clean blue collar neighborhood until you and your ilk arrived. Now it is full of filthy gay men and lesbians. This is a warning. We do not want your obscene bookstore and we will do everything we can to get you out.
A neighbor
I run down the stairs and find Joan preparing to leave as it is nearly two. “Read this,” and I hand her the letter.
“Not unexpected, is it?” she says in her cool clipped voice.
“I’m scared, Joan. What do I do now? Wait for someone to burn the place down?”
“Take it to the police. I’ll go with you.”
“You’re a trump,” I say, thinking fast. The moment of terror is over and I am very angry. “We’ll lock up and pin a sign on the door to say we’ll be back soon.”
“Good.”
All police stations no doubt have the same dank smell, the same brown walls and battered desks we found in Somerville and, at least around Boston, the same Irish policemen, blustery, kind, and congenitally prejudiced against anyone deviating from the norm: black, Hispanic, or gay.
“Sit down,” says the middle-aged sergeant in charge, looking us over with shrewd, not unkindly eyes. “What is the problem?”
“This is the problem,” I say, handing over the letter.
He takes his time reading it and seems a little uncertain. Then he coughs and says, “Your activity has been brought to our notice,” he says. “The people in your neighborhood are pretty square.”
“But so are we,” Joan says tartly. “A liberal feminist bookstore is a public service.”
It sounds a little pretentious, but, after all, why we are in Somerville is not the point. “I came here to ask for protection from what looks like the lunatic fringe and I expect that fringe is in every community these days,” I say as calmly as I can.
“Yes, well … Miss Hatfield, what can we do? I can’t afford to have an officer patrolling the block day and night. If you call us, if there is some sort of attack, we’ll come at once.” But he does not look at me or smile at me and I sense that he is troubled by something. “What did the person who called our activity to your attention say?” I ask. “What is behind a savage blundering attack on two innocent booksellers?”
“Well …,” he pauses and frowns, “I was given a book bought at your store.” He opens a drawer and brings out the evidence, Mary Daly’s Pure Lust.
“Oh.” I exchange a look with Joan. It is a rather anxious moment.
“It may interest you to know,” Joan says, “that the subtitle of Daly’s Pure Lust is Elemental Feminist Philosophy and that she teaches at Boston College in the department of philosophy.”
“She does?” Absorbing this is as difficult as if Joan had called her a murderess. The sergeant, whose name I notice is Kevin O’Reilly, is clearly in a state of bewilderment.
“I think you would find it on the shelves of any reputable bookstore,” I offer. “It has not been censored.”
“May I suggest that you convey the information Miss Hatfield has given you to the pers
on who brought the complaint?” Joan says.
“I’ll do that.” He is no doubt relieved to be able to do something. Then he smiles at me. “I had somehow expected some young dyke in trousers with a bow tie. Not,” he adds with a patronizing smile, “an elderly lady like you.”
Somehow it gives me a clue. “My guess is that that anonymous letter was written by an elderly lady.”
“Elderly dames don’t wear blue collars,” he shoots back. So it was a man, after all. As I had feared. “My advice is to take some of those queer books off the shelves, at least for a while.”
“That’s not advice I can take,” I answer. “I try at least to be open-minded.”
“Well, have a good lock on your doors, and good luck to you. Call us if you need us.”
So we go back to the store to find Martha waiting to hang her paintings, and two newcomers, an elderly woman and the stunning young black woman who had come the first day.
“Your dog has been defending the store,” Martha says.
“That’s a pretty forceful bark,” the black woman says, and laughs as I unlock the door. “Do we dare come in?”
“Oh, Patapouf gets scared when she is left alone, not to worry,” and indeed Patapouf is now wagging her tail as they troop in after me. It all feels so jolly and safe. It’s as though the letter has been a bad dream. I remember suddenly that Sergeant O’Reilly did not give it back. Just as well. But when I mention it to Joan she offers to go back and get it.
“We might need it as evidence.”
Back in the store, back in my own world, I am elated. It is good to be with three women who seem happy to be there, the elderly woman absorbed already in the poetry shelves. The black woman, whose name is Nan Blakeley, offers to help hang the paintings and that absorbs all our attention for a half-hour. Now that they are on the empty wall and I stand and look at them, I find I like them a lot more than I expected to.
“Beautiful,” says Nan beside me, and turning to Martha, “Aren’t you proud?”
“Sort of,” Martha admits. “It’s the first time I have shown my work, so …”
“I’ve always wanted to be a painter,” says Nan, who strikes me as someone able to connect quickly, as she obviously has with Martha.
“Now you have worked for your keep,” I say. “What can I do for you, Nan? I know you were here before. What are you especially interested in?” I feel it is a clumsy question and a little condescending. When will I ever learn? Learn the right tone, be at ease as Nan is?
“Oh, first of all black literature, especially autobiography by women. I saw that you had quite a lot when I came in the first time but I had to leave. So if I may, I’m just going to burrow in.”
“I thought about putting all the black writers together and then thought that all good writers should be placed together, not separated by race or even sex. Was that right?”
“Absolutely,” Nan says. “Of course.” She has taken Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens off the shelf and is sitting beside Martha, who seems lost in a trance, looking at the paintings. “What a wonderful title that is,” she says.
“It’s essays, actually, and very good they are.”
“I guess I’ll have to take it, along with Toni Morrison’s new one—you must have that.”
“On the table in front.”
When she comes to the register with the two books she lays them down for me and then kneels down to pat Patapouf, who is asleep now under the desk. “Such a dear old thing,” she says.
Somehow that gesture makes it possible for me to ask what I have been dying to ask. “I’ve been trying to guess what your profession is. Is that indiscreet of me?”
She laughs then. “You’ll never guess!”
“A psychiatrist?”
This makes her laugh again. “No, I’m a housewife, mother of two little girls, so an amateur psychiatrist maybe. My husband is a physicist at M.I.T.”
Martha hears this and comes over. “But what did you do before?” she asks.
“I was a journalist. Wrote a column for the small-town newspaper where I grew up in New Jersey.”
“How could you bear to give it up?”
“It didn’t seem important,” she says. “I guess I just wasn’t that involved.” She is looking at Martha with real interest, trying to figure out perhaps why all these questions. “It’s not like being a painter. Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“Any children?”
“I don’t want children. I know it sounds crazy and wrong … that’s what my husband says. He says I’m not natural.”
“You’re in a tight spot,” Nan says gently. “I don’t envy you.”
“It’s tough enough being a woman artist. Children might make it impossible,” says Martha with a slightly aggressive tone. She adds, “Where are your children now?”
“The smaller is in preschool. The other is in elementary school.” She looks at her watch. “I guess I had better be off to fetch them. It’s later than I thought.” But she does not hurry out without turning back at the door. “Good luck!” she says. “Good luck to the painting!”
I am thinking what a charming woman Nan is as I go over some orders. My desk is a bit chaotic. Somehow I do not notice when Martha leaves. It is very quiet now in the store, but I am not alone and, remembering that warning letter, am rather glad not to be. But in a few moments the elderly woman has paid for Amy Clampitt’s new poems, and now I am alone.
I look around the shop: books in their brilliant jackets, Martha’s paintings, light and air. How can some brute want to destroy this? Already the atmosphere has changed for me. It has become a fort instead of an open, human place. But even as this thought crosses my mind I push it away. “They” are not going to change the atmosphere, I say to myself. We are going to hang on here.
For the next hour, with no customers to interrupt me, I manage to clear away most of the bills, and that helps. “Compose the mind,” as Vicky used to say. Making order out of chaos does it for me. But remembering Vicky is not the best thing for me to do at the moment. She would be upset, horrified at what is happening. No doubt she would blame me for exposing myself as I seem to be doing without even realizing what a women’s bookstore would involve, how much I would be asked to face in myself. Though she would have called that nonsense. Vicky did not want to think about what labels like lesbian, queer, deviant meant. We were as we were and to hell with everyone else would have been her attitude. But she would have approved of Joan—aloof, embittered, coping with a divorce and an unfair settlement. Vicky would have been quick to sympathize with her.
I wonder whether I am a coward not to have said to Sergeant O’Reilly that I am a lesbian, although—and here I cannot help smiling—a lady. For that might have changed his image of us a little. Yet, I know that I could not do that. To some women who have come into the store as a pair, I have talked about Vicky. But that is different, that is simply sharing.
Shall I tell Fred what is happening? The very idea makes me physically uncomfortable and I get up and get a dog bone for Patapouf as some kind of gesture to keep the devils at bay. My family had seemed to take for granted that Vicky and I were partners and had never asked an embarrassing question. And Vicky would have lied if they had probed. But if only the obvious, the exhibitionist, the aggressively role-conscious women “come out,” how is a bridge ever to be made? And is it not precisely that bridge that I had envisioned, though not consciously, when I dreamed of a women’s bookstore? As though somewhere deep down I want to be counted in, to be an active part of what is going on, want to make known where I stand in a discreet, unobjectionable way?
I wish there were someone I could talk to. Caroline! But Caroline is dying. I cannot drag her back into life. No, there is no one, and so I am thinking when Angelica walks in. “Oh Angelica!” I cry out fervently, going to greet her.
“Yes, Angelica … you sound marooned,” she says, sitting down. “Nobody here, I see.”
“Th
ey come and go. Today has been rather quiet. I even managed to clear my desk.”
“Bravo!” She gladly accepts a cup of tea and I go out to put the kettle on while she talks to Patapouf, who has emerged from under the desk to be petted.
“Well, you seem to be well launched,” Angelica says when we are settled with cups of tea. “It’s a delightful atmosphere. What are those strange paintings, by the way?”
“A young woman brought them in. She’s having a hard time being an artist and not wanting children, as her husband does.”
“So you offered to hang her work? Of course you did.”
“Yes. I am not crazy about it, but she needs support. If someone buys one, that will be great. And, besides, I am on her side.”
“It’s all happening, just as you dreamed it would,” Angelica says warmly.
“Yes, but …,” and of course the story of the anonymous letter and Sergeant O’Reilly, all of it has to be told.
“Mmmm,” Angelica says, not looking at me, a little shy, I think. “A dirty business, Harriet.”
“The last thing I expected,” I confess. “It really shook me up.”
“An alarm system?” she says then.
“No, they always go off by mistake. I shall have stronger locks put on, and then we’ll wait and see.”
“Rather like sitting on a keg of dynamite. Why don’t you and Patapouf spend the nights at my house for a while?”
That is so like Angelica, but it is not a solution, not really. “I can’t run away,” I explain.
“Hatred,” Angelica murmurs. “Of course you are frightened.” I sense that she is holding back.
“And confused,” I say, “confused … It is also illuminating in a way. I have never felt like a leper before, an outcast. But huge numbers of people in our society do, of course. Maybe, for all we know, the blue-collars do.”