We Are All Good People Here

by Susan Rebecca White

  • • •

  She saw Fig standing by herself near the guest book, smiling bravely but looking uncomfortable. It was hard to believe Fig was only twenty-six. She looked like a matron. It was her tight hairdo, her fussy little suit.

  “Do you need a drink as much as I do?” asked Eve as she sidled up next to her.

  “Lord, yes!” said Fig. She glanced at Eve, smiling, but then her expression shifted into something different—confusion and surprise.

  “What?” asked Eve. But before Fig could answer, Eve’s mother was storming toward her, her cheeks flushed, her eyes hard.

  “I cannot believe you.”

  “What?” Eve had no idea what was going on, this sudden onslaught of fury.

  Her mother took her pointer finger, the nail painted bright red, and jabbed it into the lapel of Eve’s pea coat. “This,” she said. “You found this an appropriate accessory to wear to Mother’s funeral?”

  Eve looked down and saw the button she had pinned to the coat, which said in small print: “Fellatio is fun. Cunnilingus is cool.” Someone had given her the button months ago; she had gotten so used to it being on her lapel that she had forgotten about it.

  “I didn’t even realize I was wearing it. It was just left on from a long time ago. Don’t worry, Mother. I bet no one here even knows what those words mean.”

  “I know what they mean! Your father knows what they mean! And I promise you everyone else in this room knows exactly what those words mean. They mean: I don’t give a damn about my grandmother. They mean: I don’t give a damn about my family. You just despise us, don’t you, Eve? There is no conclusion other than that. You despise your own family. You want to humiliate us at every turn. Well, congratulations. A-plus!”

  “Mommy, I didn’t mean to wear it. I promise. I’m sorry. I’ll take it off. I’ll throw it away.”

  “Don’t bother. And you and Warren don’t bother coming back to the house. It was a mistake to ask you to come home.”

  “Mommy—”

  Her mother turned and walked away. Eve looked at Fig, whose face was frozen in shock. But then Fig turned to her, put her hand on Eve’s forearm.

  “She’s lashing out because she’s grieving,” she said. “Why don’t you come and stay with Charlie and me for the night? The guest bed is all made, and then tomorrow after the service maybe you can go back to your mom’s house and clear things up.”

  • • •

  She had to admit that Charlie and Fig’s house was adorable, a white cottage with window boxes filled with boxwoods and paperwhites on the first floor and dormer windows popping out of the roof on the second. It reminded her of the house the Anderson family lived in on the TV show Father Knows Best. She wondered when Fig would have a baby, make Charlie a father.

  They went inside and Fig led her and Warren to the guest room upstairs, hesitating for just a moment before saying, “There’s a pullout bed in the living room if y’all would rather not share?”

  “Fig, we’ve been sharing a bed for years now,” said Eve, and her mind flashed to that first night with Warren, the night she discovered that Daniella planned to go to Mississippi without her. She had gone alone to the West End, where she had hoped to find Warren, where she had lingered at the bar until he showed up. And he did, as if she had conjured him. She thought of how bold she had been, approaching him as soon as he walked in the door, how she had looked him straight in the eye and told him she wanted to go home with him, and how, soon after, they were naked together in his bed. He had plunged right into her, and she had felt a tearing pain. And the pain, somehow, felt good, as if she were ripping herself away from some former self, some naïve, girlish self who believed in loyalty above all.

  Fig continued to fuss over things, pulling an extra blanket from a shelf in the closet and putting it at the foot of the bed, checking the medicine cabinet to make sure it contained extra toothbrushes and toothpaste.

  Because all of their clothes were at Eve’s parents’ house, Fig dug up some comfy things for them to change into—a pair of sweatpants from Fig’s PE days at college, along with an old Agnes Scott T-shirt. She gave Warren a pair of Charlie’s sweats and one of his old Phi Delt sweatshirts.

  “Look at us,” said Eve, twirling in front of Warren. “It’s like we’re in disguise.”

  They went into the living room where a Christmas tree stood on display, bejeweled with colored lights. It was a Fraser fir, the same kind Eve’s mother always insisted on, though the elder Mrs. Whalen was of the firm opinion that the tree should not be put up until Christmas Eve. Charlie, his tie removed but dress clothes still on, had lit a fire and was now pouring drinks, Scotch on the rocks for all. Her brother handed her one, and Eve made her way to the sectional sofa, where she sat down with a sigh.

  “How about some music?” she asked Charlie.

  “What do you want to hear?”

  “Do you have any Dylan? Maybe Blonde on Blonde?”

  “I’ve got Dylan’s Greatest Hits.”

  Of course, Charlie had his Greatest Hits. God, he was so derivative. But never mind. When he put the album on, the opening song was the same as the opener on Blonde on Blonde, “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.”

  “Well, they’ll stone you when you’re trying to be so good. . . .”

  Ain’t that the truth, Eve thought, remembering her mother jabbing her finger into her chest, infuriated over a tiny button that Eve hadn’t even realized she was wearing, a button that encouraged people to have fun with their bodies.

  Warren sat next to her. She was annoyed at him for siding with Charlie at the viewing, but it was still nice to feel his leg against hers. “Do you have a joint?” she asked.

  He pulled one from behind his ear, like a magician with a trick hat.

  “Where’s Fig?” asked Warren.

  “She’ll be here in a minute,” Charlie said. “She’s just putting together something for us to eat.” He settled into the armchair across from them, legs spread wide, drink balanced on his thigh. He looked extremely comfortable inside his own house. He looked like the king of the castle.

  “Do you have a light?” asked Eve.

  “Sure,” he said, putting his drink down on the floor and walking to the stone fireplace. He pulled a glass ashtray and a Zippo from the mantel, where several silver-framed photographs were on display, including his and Fig’s engagement portrait.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, waving the joint in his direction.

  “What is that, marijuana?” asked Charlie.

  “Yes, Charlie. It is a marijuana cigarette, and after you smoke it you are going to become both a communist and a practitioner of free love.”

  “When did you become such a smartass, Sis?” Charlie asked.

  She lit the joint, inhaled. She held the smoke in her lungs for a moment, then pushed it out.

  She passed the joint to Warren, who took a hit before reaching across the room to give it to Charlie.

  “I can’t,” said Charlie, waving away the offer. “I might run for office one day.”

  “He’s adorable, isn’t he?” Eve asked Warren.

  Fig, who had changed into black capri pants and a thin gray sweater, walked into the room and set a tray down on the coffee table. On it was a bowl full of saltines next to a white dip with little green flecks in it, along with serving knives and paper napkins.

  “Cream cheese and olive,” said Fig. “It’s yummy.”

  Eve dipped a knife into the cream cheese mixture and spread it onto a saltine. It was yummy, creamy and smooth with little salty nuggets of olive mixed in.

  “Do you want a hit?” Warren asked Fig.

  Fig glanced at Charlie.

  “You have to ask his permission?” Eve asked.

  “No, I just, I wanted to see if Charlie was doing it or not.”

  “I’m not, but you go ahead if you want to, sweetheart.”

  Fig sat on the sofa next to Eve. Warren handed Fig the joint, reaching over Eve to do so.
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  “You just put it to your mouth like a cigarette, but hold the smoke in your lungs before exhaling,” said Eve.

  Fig took a hit, coughed, and blew the smoke out. “Wow,” she said. “Now I’ve smoked marijuana.”

  Warren smiled, amused. He grabbed a saltine and dragged it through the cream cheese and olive.

  Fig passed the joint back to Eve, who took a hit and passed it on to Warren.

  “This is perfect stoner food,” said Warren.

  “Thanks,” said Fig, who had turned to sit sideways on the sofa so that she could face Warren and Eve, her knees pulled into her chest like a young girl. “So what’s it like to live in New York? I’ve only visited once, when I was twelve. We saw the Rockettes and went ice-skating at Rockefeller Center. We had a ball.”

  “We pretty much avoid the tourist stuff,” said Eve. “We’re mostly just teaching at the school and organizing against the war in Vietnam.”

  “What does ‘organizing’ entail?” asked Charlie.

  “We help out guys who have been drafted and can’t, in good conscience, serve. And also guys who are in the Army and want to leave.”

  Charlie shook his head, though he didn’t say anything.

  “Let me guess,” said Eve. “You disapprove.”

  “It just seems like you’re doing the enemy’s job so well that we should fight you instead of the Vietcong,” Charlie said.

  “Depends on who you think the enemy is,” said Eve.

  Charlie left to go to bed shortly afterward. Eve couldn’t tell if he was upset by their conversation or just genuinely tired, but in any event it was just she, Fig, and Warren left in the living room, passing the joint around, Fig getting more proficient at smoking each time it circled back to her.

  At some point Fig took her hair down from its tight little updo and restyled it into a simple ponytail. She was very pretty. Mrs. Whalen had told Eve, with no small amount of pride, that Fig had been on the Homecoming Court when she was a senior at Lovett.

  “I admire y’all so much,” Fig proclaimed. “You’re really doing something with your lives. You’re taking a stand. And you’re living in New York! It must be so thrilling to live there, even if you don’t . . . you know . . . tour the sites.”

  “I’m sure Charlie could practice law in Manhattan,” suggested Eve.

  “He doesn’t want to leave Atlanta. He says the social ‘infrastructure’ here is too compelling, that between y’all’s family history and the Driving Club directory, he’s just one drink away from everyone who matters.”

  “That sounds exactly like something my brother would say,” said Eve, standing so that she could retrieve more saltines from the kitchen.

  “Fuck Charlie,” said Warren, turning toward Fig so that he was looking directly at her. “What do you want?”

  Fig held his gaze for a moment before answering. “Adventure,” she said.

  Fig continued staring at Warren, her lips parted slightly. Warren reached over and put his hand on her leg.

  “Excitement,” added Fig, twisting a piece of hair that had escaped from her ponytail. “Something different.”

  And then Warren moved toward Fig, leaning in so close that his lips were grazing hers. Eve watched from where she stood halfway between the couch and the doorway, frozen, as Warren rested his hand lightly on Fig’s cheek, a move Eve remembered from when they first kissed, a move that was so small, so incidental, and yet felt so proprietary. And now Warren was kissing Fig, while motioning for Eve to come back to the couch to join them. For a moment Eve felt herself pulled toward Warren’s desire.

  But then she glanced at the fireplace and caught sight of their engagement portrait on the mantel, its silver frame gleaming. The two of them looked so happy, sitting side by side on a bench by the Duck Pond, near where they now lived. Soon their wedding photos would also be on display, but those probably hadn’t even come back from the photographer yet.

  Ah, fuck the system, right? Break every taboo. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t do what Warren wanted. She couldn’t act like a crazy motherfucker when it came to her brother’s wife, even if her brother’s wife was a willing participant.

  “I’m exhausted,” she told them. “I’m going to bed.”

  Fig looked up at her, her eyes searching and uncertain. “I guess we should all call it a night?” she asked, hesitant.

  “You two can do whatever you want,” Eve answered.

  Eve walked away, heading for the stairs that would lead to the guest bedroom that Fig had meticulously prepared for them. She turned around once at the doorframe, watched Warren’s hands on Fig’s waist, his fingers encircling her.

  Chapter 7

  SMASH SESSION

  Atlanta, 1970

  Eve sat on the back steps of the house, opening the latest letter she had received from her father, her father who didn’t even know she had moved back home and was living not ten miles from him. As always, her father had used his Crane stationery, and had addressed the letter to her old apartment in New York, the Morningside Heights walk-up where she and Warren and an assortment of others had lived, off and on, since college. Though Eve was no longer living there, members of the collective still used the New York apartment. Any mail from her family was immediately forwarded because it often contained money.

  The house they were renting in Atlanta was a baby-shit-yellow brick ranch on Euclid Avenue, sandwiched between two crumbling Victorians. Long ago this downtown neighborhood was fashionable, but its status had tanked with the rise of the automobile and suburbia, and now, more than half a century later, the grand old Victorians were abandoned or turned into boardinghouses.

  Eve pulled the ivory-colored card from the envelope and opened it, hoping a bill might fall out. Nothing. She ran her fingers over the front of the card, engraved with her father’s initials, LRW, standing for “Lemuel Richard Whalen,” her father’s middle name the same as the pig president’s. Her father was one of the pigs, yes, but Eve still believed he was better than Nixon. This belief of hers, that there were different levels of culpability, got her into trouble during Smash sessions, the point of which was to smash any remaining bourgeois notions and attitudes the members were holding on to. Smash the past in order to build the future. Smash the past in order to resist imperialist control. Smash the past in order to destroy the idea that because the members of their collective were white and almost all of them were from wealthy families, they could return to the straight life whenever they wanted simply by washing their faces and tucking in their shirts.

  Well, fuck that. A true revolutionary could never go back. The Panthers couldn’t go back. Fred Hampton sure as shit couldn’t go back. Nat Turner couldn’t go back, but neither could John Brown, because though he was white, he had been irreversibly committed. He had been willing to die for the cause. The members of Smash believed it was better to die in honor than to live as their parents did, anesthetized by liquor and Valium, getting and spending, the sweat and blood of colored people past and present allowing them the luxury to believe that they deserved their good fortune, that they had somehow earned it by virtue and hard work, when really they “earned” it through exploitation.

  Eve knew that she had not been born innocent. But she was committed to change. She was so committed that when Smash decided it needed a cell in the South, to fight racist America at ground zero, she volunteered to go. She thought of herself as a double agent, once intimate with the enemy. How strange to be back in Atlanta, chosen as their base city because it had a sizable enough counterculture that they wouldn’t stand out. They would be mistaken for hippies, though they were nothing like hippies. “Peace is for pussies,” Abby liked to say.

  Eve hated leaving her job at The Children’s Place. She had loved working with young children, loved their curiosity and exuberance. She had become known as the Reading Lady, because nearly every child she encountered learned how to read. It was really just a matter of paying attention: paying attention to what kind of stories they li
ked, to whether or not they mixed up their letters, to whether or not they might need glasses to help them see. She studied their sweet faces, noticed the varying colors of their skin tones, tried to notice everything. It was their faces she saw when she thought of the children in Vietnam burned by napalm or shot dead by U.S. soldiers. (That photo from the massacre at My Lai, the mother holding her toddler, both about to be killed. It was too much. It was unbearable.) Black or Vietnamese, it made no difference to the men in charge of her country. Both were expendable.

  In Atlanta they were learning judo, karate, how to load a gun quickly, how to aim, how to shoot. “Piece Now, motherfuckers.” That’s what Warren always said, Warren who had brought her into Students for a Democratic Society, before he became disillusioned and left, giving the splintering factions the middle finger on his way out the door. Especially Jeff Jones and Bernardine Dohrn, with whom he had some sort of falling-out, probably over sex, but maybe it was just over power. Who knew? Some from SDS had morphed into the Weathermen. Just a few months earlier three of them—Diana, Terry, and Ted—had blown themselves up while building a bomb they intended to detonate elsewhere. The rest disappeared deep underground, not a trace left behind.

  Eve had known all three who had died. Not well, but well enough to cry when she heard the news.

  Warren kept a stolen box of dynamite in the rusty storage shed behind their rental house, along with some copies of Popular Mechanics and Science of Revolutionary Warfare. He said it was time the American people got a taste of their own medicine in retaliation for what they were allowing to happen, daily, in Vietnam. “We have to blow things up to start all over,” Warren said. “But we have to know what the fuck we’re doing.”

  • • •