by May Sarton
As I walk along with Patapouf decorously on the leash beside me, I miss Vicky more than I have since her death. She would have recognized a brownish bird who flies past and might be a thrush. When I wander down a hillside to one of the ponds where we had often sat and picnicked on a stone bench, I sit down, trying to contain a wave of nostalgia for those safe days we shared, and to keep back the tears that are pricking my eyes.
But what keeps grief from engulfing me is my knowledge, my having to admit that Vicky would not have liked at all what has been happening at the shop. The idea of her disapproval sharpens my wits, for I begin to think of all the people who have already found refuge in the bookstore, the woman I had called a bag-lady at first, Martha with her conflict about painting, the two generous nuns who seem at this moment like sparklers lighting up the dark, the two lesbians and their dog, the older woman who is founding a home caretakers’ organization as a way of handling her husband’s death, the young women who are best friends and clean houses, and this very morning two men who appeared out of nowhere to give me support. “O brave new world that has such people in it!”
I exult in what has already been accomplished, and I exult to feel as alive as I do, as full of hope in spite of being under attack. My friends from Chestnut Hill may think I am crazy to have chosen to open a women’s bookstore in this particular neighborhood, but I know they are wrong and decide to sing one of my Patapouf songs. Years ago when she was a puppy I used to make up songs for her, always hoping she would sing back. Her ears are attuned to my voice, and she just cocks her head and listens, half closing her eyes.
It is a little embarrassing in the middle of an aria to see a young couple approaching with birding glasses. No doubt they have not heard me, but I feel exposed enough to get up and leave by another path. It is time anyway that Patapouf and I go home to put a sandwich together for Joan.
She has news for me. A reporter from the Globe has called and wants an interview. I am pouring us a glass of California burgundy and when she says it my hand shakes. “Oh dear,” I say, sitting down, “must I see this person? What did he or she have to say?”
“It was a woman called Hetty something or other. She wants you to call her.” Joan looks rather somber. “Apparently word has gotten out that you have been threatened.”
“Bad news travels fast.”
“And the wrong publicity could wreck this place,” Joan says.
“So you think I should not allow an interview? Go in hiding, as it were?” The minute I utter the words I know that I will see this Hetty person. But I sense also that Joan, for the second time, is violently opposed to my instinctive acts of this sort. “Oh dear, the cheese hasn’t melted properly,” I say, playing for time.
“It’s a good sandwich,” she says, frowning. “But yes, I’m against an interview now that undoubtedly is based on news that has little to do with the value of Hatfield House. It might bring in crowds of people you really don’t want to attract.”
“It’s also a chance to state my position once and for all.” I know we are at an impasse and decide to change the subject. “The two young women whom I am going to try out for Saturdays told me they are best friends but not lovers, you will be glad to hear.”
“That’s neither here nor there. How do you know they are reliable people? Their sex life seems to me to have nothing to do with it.”
“I hate it when you are cross, Joan. It makes you sound so cold.”
“Sorry, but I am, after all, involved,” she says in, for her, quite a passionate tone of voice.
“If you don’t like them after you have spent next Saturday teaching them the ropes, I’ll find an excuse and not hire them after all. How is that?”
“All right,” she says grudgingly.
I don’t like feeling at cross purposes for she is the person I have come to depend on most, the efficient ally through all the problems. “You know, Joan,” I say, trying to catch her eye, but she is not looking my way at the moment, “the reason we make such a good team is because we are so different. I may rebel sometimes at being held in check,” and I laugh at the image of myself as a wild horse, “but I really could not manage without you at this point. I hope you do know that?”
“I don’t have your verve, that’s for sure,” which is a large concession for Joan, who could have said, “I dislike your temperament,” which perhaps would have been closer to the truth.
“Well, I had better go down, in case there are people waiting. Can you find your way out?”
“Of course.”
I couldn’t be gladder to see anyone than I am when I see Chris and Mary waving at me through the locked door. “How are you faring?” Chris asks. “We couldn’t resist just popping in for a minute.”
I rest my eyes on their already dear faces. How can I feel such intimacy so soon? “You can’t possibly imagine how glad I am to see you,” I say. “Oh dear, so much has happened since you were here.”
“Like what?” Mary asks, sitting on the arm of one of the chairs.
“I’ll bet a lot of people have come. Word gets around fast when there’s a good thing going,” Chris says.
“On the contrary, I am causing an outburst of hatred, a threat, and obscene messages written on the windows at night.”
“No!” Mary’s eyes are wide. “And whyever threats?”
“Outraged someone, and perhaps more than one someone. It is not what I have done, it is what I am,” I say, suddenly overcome with the reality of what I am facing as though I were indeed a criminal. “They say the store itself is an obscenity and filled with lesbians and they don’t want people like that in a nice, quiet, blue-collar neighborhood. There you have it!”
Chris looks thoughtful. “It’s a bad time,” she says. “You are reaping the seeds of fear.”
“And then,” Mary says, “people love to hate. It gets the adrenaline rushing, but it is frightening. What can we do, Chris? How can we help?”
Chris smiles. “It’s a pity in some ways that we no longer wear the habit,” she says. “Nuns are fairly respectable customers after all,” and for some reason we all burst into laughter. It is such a grotesque idea that going back into the Middle Ages now would help bring people into the twentieth century. Their presence is a comfort, and I am happy that they stay on, looking at books for over an hour. They only leave when Sue Bagley appears, much to my dismay.
I pretend to be busy and, on an impulse, call the Globe and make a date to see the reporter on Monday morning, in my apartment. Is it a wise decision? As usual, I acted on impulse, but the young woman sounded warm and interested and said they would send a photographer, although I explained that I would rather not talk in the shop. It is agreed that he come later and take some photos of the shop with me in it, after the interview. Joan, I feel sure, will not approve. Why hadn’t I asked the nuns’ advice?
I am extremely irritated when Sue Bagley comes over to the desk and says with apparent pleasure, “So I hear you’re in trouble.”
“Bad news does get around fast, doesn’t it?”
“A friend of mine saw some dirty words on your windows at dawn,” she announces. “I knew something like that was bound to happen. People around here are nothing but hoodlums.”
“On what do you base that view?” I ask coldly.
“The way they carry on in the streets, laughing and screaming ugly words. They never take in their trash cans, just let them bang around on the street. Drug takers, no doubt, too.”
“Why do you live in this neighborhood if you don’t like it?”
“My dear, it’s cheap. That’s why.” She seems very pleased with herself this afternoon. “And why did you choose to open a radical bookstore in this neighborhood?”
Why did I? I really ask myself. “I don’t know. I wanted lots of different kinds of people to use the store, and that is what has happened, as a matter of fact.”
“Too many queers,” she says.
“And what if I told you that I am, as you call it, quee
r myself?” I am cross enough to take the bull by the horns.
“Oh well,” she says, a little taken aback, “you are old and respectable and no one would ever guess.”
There it is in a nutshell. The image of gay and lesbian in the general public’s mind is, of course, the young and exhibitionistic, the outré and the promiscuous, visible and shocking. And if none of the old and respectable like me ever admit what they are that image will reinforce discriminatory laws and the kind of ignorant attack I am suffering at the moment.
“That, Miss Bagley, is no comfort. It makes me see that I have been a coward.”
“It is none of anybody’s business what your private life is or was, and you’ll do the shop no good if you come out with disturbing facts at this point. You’re surely not thinking of doing so?” She seems for a change off her high horse and quite concerned.
“I don’t know what I’ll do. But one thing I know. I am not going to be driven out by those goons,” and with that I turn deliberately to the papers on my desk. I need time to think, for it is becoming increasingly clear to me that the interview is a chance for action, and I must summon the courage to take it. I resist the temptation to argue with Sue Bagley. Somehow I sense that she has been hurt, that her aggressive behavior about lesbians is not entirely theoretical. I am in no mood for an outbreak of personal tragedy at this point.
The mail provides an excuse and, while I immerse myself in it, Sue Bagley leaves, in a mild huff. She expects to be able to talk at length when she drops in, but I am adamant this time. “I hope you will be sensible,” she says at the door, “and not rush in where angels fear to tread.”
In the mail I find a note from Joe Hunter, asking me whether I would care to come and have dinner with them next Saturday at six:
… We have much to talk about, and we hope to lure you with Eddie’s coq au vin. Don’t bother to answer this unless you can’t come.
Then a P.S.:
Perhaps Patapouf could stay home and defend the shop. We have two Siamese cats.
It is my first invitation from anyone in the neighborhood and I feel very pleased, also because they have been so kind, those two. Patapouf, under my desk, is dreaming and gives two or three muffled barks.
The afternoon proves to be an unusually busy one so it may be a good thing that there is no time to think about the interview. Martha arrives at tea time with her husband in tow, a tall, thin, shy young man wearing dark glasses.
“I wanted David to see the paintings,” she explains after we shake hands. And then, “See?” as they stand together looking at the wall.
“She is very talented, isn’t she?” I say, standing beside them.
“I suppose she may be,” David says. “At any rate she is consumed by it, and I have to admire that.”
“But you don’t really like them, do you?” Martha needles. She appears to be close to tears and they stand apart, not touching, the gulf between them clear to me in their unconnected stance.
He doesn’t answer this probing question so I fill in for him. “They are strange and perhaps troubling, but the people who come into the store always look at them with great interest. They mesmerize …”
“I wish I understood them better,” David says, turning to me.
“You don’t have to understand,” Martha says, and no doubt they have been through this before. “You just have to let yourself feel something when you look at them.”
“I feel literally in the dark,” he says bitterly, “shut out.”
“Oh come on, David!”
At this he sighs and I am relieved to see him put an arm round her shoulders. “I’m impossible, I know.”
“Yes,” says Martha, extricating herself, “you make me miserable. It’s not fair. I don’t understand what you are doing but I don’t rub that in, do I?”
“Art is not supposed to be closed to the common human mind is it? Physics of the kind I am involved in is, at best, open to a very few people with a certain expertise. Can’t you see? There is a difference,” and he looks at her now with a faintly patronizing smile. “We are not rivals, Martha. Can’t you get that?”
“I don’t know what we are,” Martha says bitterly.
I wish I could make some brilliant remark that would close the gap but I can’t. I am out of my depth.
“I’ve got a class in ten minutes,” he says, “have to rush,” and he is gone in a flurry, eager to be off the hook, of course.
“Sit down, Martha. Let’s have a cup of tea.”
“Oh I’m so furious,” she says, “there are times when I hate David. He is so smug.”
“Maybe just at sea,” I venture.
“We do nothing but fight these days. It ends in bed and that’s no good either.” She raises her voice as I have gone into the little room to put on water for tea. “If we had a baby I would hate it, forced on me by his power of creating something, deprived of my power.” She is unaware that someone has come in and cannot help hearing her outburst. Fortunately it turns out to be Marian Tuckerworth, and when I come back with the tea tray I beg her to join us, and introduce them.
“Thanks. I’m at a dead end. A cup of tea won’t find a care-taker, but it will revive me.”
I explain quickly what Mrs. Tuckerworth is doing, founding an organization to offer help to women who have become sole caretaker of a dying husband or other relative.
“It’s proving next to impossible to find the right person, experienced enough, with some nursing experience, and,” she adds with a smile, “above all, cheerful, if possible with a sense of humor.”
Martha, still absorbed in her own problems, says, “If David jokes about having a baby I’ll kill him.”
Her intensity forces Marian to turn to her with obvious concern and interest. “I gather your husband is trying to persuade you to have a child. Hard to unpersuade him?”
“Impossible,” Martha says. “He thinks I’m unnatural. Women were created to have children, you see, but,” she turns to Marian and sets her cup down, “I’m a painter. I haven’t even begun my career. I can’t stop now for years and be a nurse, can I?”
I am glad to see that Martha is addressing Marian more gently, no longer apparently screaming from a hilltop as she had been a moment ago.
“Those landscapes,” I make a gesture to the wall where they hang, “are Martha’s work. You can see how talented she is.”
“I don’t know yet,” Martha says, suddenly humble, “I haven’t had time to find out.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“Good heavens, then you do have time. Why not ask your husband to let you have five years and then have a child?”
“I’m not maternal,” Martha says shortly. “It’s not my thing.”
“I’ll tell you something,” Marian says quietly. “I did not want children and fortunately for me, neither did my husband.”
“What did he do?” Martha is visibly more cheerful. She has found an ally.
“He was a psychiatrist who specialized in treating cancer patients. He was convinced and proved it many times that cancer was often psychosomatic. He was a pioneer in that field.”
“Why didn’t you want children?” Martha asks.
“I don’t know … maybe our marriage seemed complete, so much so that we were afraid of an intruder. Now I’m shocking you!” And she laughs her endearing musical laugh. “We were very happy,” she adds, “until he was crippled by arteriosclerosis. He died of it after four years of hell, and I very nearly died I was so exhausted by the end.”
“Why are you looking for caretakers?” Martha asks.
“So other women won’t have to go through what I did.”
“Oh.”
For a moment we each drink our tea, the silence buzzing with all our thoughts.
“Organizing to make home care available is proving to be a great deal harder than I could have imagined. Medicare pays nothing toward it, of course, and there appear to be very few qualified people. We nee
d people who will come into homes where a son has AIDS. Right now that is the priority, as you can imagine.”
“I thought Hospice would come in,” I venture.
“Sometimes, but not if it is to be a long illness. Emphysema, for instance, may go on for years.”
“Oh dear,” Martha sighs, “I wish I felt art was useful. I wish I could feel more justified.”
It has begun to rain and several people have come in, partly for shelter no doubt. Suddenly the store is quite full and the time and place for intimate talk are no longer with us.
Marian gets up and brings a book on Jung to pay for, stops by Martha, who is sitting at the table where she can see her paintings, and says, “Stick to your guns! A child would not be the solution to whatever is wrong with your marriage right now. I feel sure of that.”
“Thanks,” says Martha, blushing, “you have made me feel less of a monster.”
Marian has left but Martha stays on. I devoutly hope no one will make a negative comment about her paintings, and luckily no one does. And I settle back into the business end of the store, glad to be too busy now, too happily involved, to dread the Monday interview.
8
It is awkward not to see Hetty Rinehart, the interviewer, in the shop. Here, after all, I am in command and in my element. But I do not at all want Joan in on whatever I may blurt out, so the only thing is to greet Miss Rinehart in the shop, introduce Joan, and then take her upstairs. Either there have been no further insults written on the windows or the two kind strangers have washed them off by the time we open up.
Hetty is on time and while she talks briefly with Joan and looks around I size her up, a shock at first glance. Tall, she wears a blue-jean miniskirt, black silk stockings, heavy white Reeboks, and a long white sweater over a plaid shirt. Her wave of blond hair is cut in some absurd new fashion. Overall, a plain face diminished rather than enhanced by the way she dresses.