Becoming Lin

by Tricia Dower

I have a fantastic idea for Interim. We’re supposed to come up w/a project challenging enough to take at least 40 hours a week. More time than I spend now but I can skip prayer breakfast & choir occasionally, quit being so neurotic about housework. We won’t have any friends of a friend here then. Come December, Carl says, the weather will be too dicey to drive to the border.

  If their advisors approve, students can do just about anything for credit during what St. Olaf calls Interim, four weeks of independent study every January. Lin could write a symphony or paint a landscape if she had the talent, dig up hieroglyphs in Egypt if she had the money. Her idea is to interview men of various ages to determine how draft vulnerability influences their opinions about Vietnam. She’ll collar the guys in her classes first. It can choke her up wondering which ones will be dead a year or two from now, which of their families sentenced to grief. The project came to her when their last draft dodger said Congress has too many chicken hawks, men who never served in the military even when they had the chance yet are gung-ho to send others to war. If she structures it well, it should satisfy her Political Science/Sociology requirement.

  Seeking inspiration for interview questions, she scavenges on campus for discarded newspapers and magazines, tapes clippings to her office walls at home. Two images nearly rip her heart out: a soldier cradling a stricken buddy, their faces in torment; four Marines, mouths bitter, eyes vacant, holding a dead comrade aloft as if portaging a vessel. Seems there’s no front or safe haven in Vietnam. A bullet, grenade or bomb fragment is apt to find a soldier anywhere. It’s not like on TV history shows—men hunkered down in foxholes or spilling from amphibious landing craft. She whispers to the men in her pictures: Are you scared? Do you wish you’d gone to Canada? War seems so much worse than what happened to her, a comforting, shameful fact.

  On the third day in November, she eels her way through the crowd on the staircase to reach Dr. Schmidt’s pebble-glassed door. He’s head of Psychology and her faculty advisor. It’s condescending to think of old people as cute, she knows, but his ruddy cheeks and white-haired crew cut crack her up. She perches anxiously on a chair in his small, messy office and takes in the fruity aroma of his pipe tobacco as he considers her idea. When he says it’s “sterling,” she cheers inside. Then he says he wants three to ten pages, double-spaced, before Thanksgiving: goal statement, related literature, conceptual framework, research questions, methodology, scope and limitations. Criminy. Less than three weeks to work on it. She has the wildest urge to confide in him about how busy “Carl’s Fugitives” are keeping her but that would be as reckless as getting in a car with a stranger. Ron doesn’t want even Grace to know about them, a treasonous move she relishes more than she should.

  Fri, Nov 4/66

  I was a regular motormouth about my project at Grace’s tonite. She said it’s brave & ambitious. R wondered how I’d go about recruiting men & where I’d interview them. I said I hadn’t worked that out yet. On the drive home, he said he has grave concerns about me alone w/strange men. If anything happens, it’ll put us in an awkward position, pit my word against the man’s. You never know who’ll turn out to be an Eldon Jukes, he said, you’re quite naive at times, too trusting. Jeez, I said, give me an example besides him. He couldn’t think of one, said I should come up w/a project involving women in the congregation, they’d appreciate more of my attention. I said, Choir’s not enough? Prayer breakfast, Bible class, Crafty Gals, Vacation Bible School, pancake breakfasts & white elephant sales not enough? Calm down, he said, it’s only a suggestion. (Yeah, & I’m Raquel Welch.) He went to bed as soon as we got home. I’m in my office, watching the moon stare down at me. It looks cold enough to burn your skin off.

  Icy ferns and feathers grow on the parsonage windows overnight and the grass crisps with frost. Linda Wise might have brooded more or given up in despair. But a fresh notion percolates in Lin Brunson’s head: identify factors likely to cause a Methodist congregation to support or not support the war in Vietnam—gender, age, education, family status, military service and political affiliation. It’s even better than her first idea. She shouldn’t have gotten in a huff at Ron. Thanks to him, she has a congregation to survey.

  She runs it by Dr. Schmidt on Monday, levels with him about Ron’s concerns, carefully choosing her words. She doesn’t want to come across as a peevish wife. He sucks on his pipe and appraises her over bifocals. “Marriage requires compromise,” he says. Experience speaking? Wonky creases suggest he irons his own flannel slacks. He also says, “This is Luther Land. Limiting it to Methodists narrows the scope. You’ll need a cogent argument for that in your proposal if you want Soc or PoliSci to approve it for credit.” He’s her advisor for her major only. “Designating it a religious community might go down better. What’s your hypothesis?”

  She’s ready for that. “Gender is the single most important factor in attitudes toward the use of military force.”

  He lifts his shaggy white eyebrows, taps his pipe in a cut glass ashtray the size of a dinner plate. “Didn’t figure you for a feminist.”

  Before she can say she isn’t, he dictates a reading list offering female perspectives on war. She checks the books out of the library before Ron picks her up, scans them as he drives down the hill. “What a scream,” she says. “Two of these are written by men.”

  “Pardon me?” he says in the overly polite tone they’ve been using with each other since Friday night. Keyed up over Dr. Schmidt’s go-ahead, she’s forgotten they aren’t back to normal yet. Wistful and contrite, she touches his always there, always warm, hand gripping the steering wheel. He exudes such holiness in his clerical collar, some deep mysterious knowledge about what’s right. How could she not let him guide her?

  She lays out her second proposal before him and in a spurt of generosity says, “I’m excited about what I can learn. There are so many more variables. Thank you for challenging me. I can be in such a hurry to do whatever, I sometimes forget to make sure it’s the right whatever.” She was heedless even in kindergarten, according to a report card Mother kept, is lucky to have Ron to remind her to stop and think.

  He shoots her a magnanimous smile. “Praise Jesus. But why involve men at all, sweetheart? If you believe gender is the major factor and I don’t doubt it—your intuition’s far superior to mine—why waste time confirming it? I’d skip straight over it and look for the major factor in attitudes among women alone. What would your hypothesis be in that case? Simply speculating here. Humor me, okay?”

  Enthusiasm leaves her like bath water spiraling down the drain. As the familiar landscape passes by—the nearly leafless trees, the houses with roofs sagging like bad backs under monstrous TV antennas—she cautions herself to open her mind, be more deferential than defensive. It is only a question. “I don’t know, something about a woman’s status, maybe? The more financially independent she is, the more she owns her views about war?” Would Mother tell Daddy to get lost if she had the money?

  “I’m impressed,” he says and she’s confounded by how precariously happy his praise makes her. He wants to know what questions would ferret out her hypothesis. She pries her mind open, open, open until it trembles. “Not sure. Asking about income is rude. And the sample would be small. If even half the women in our congregation take part, that wouldn’t be more than thirty or so.”

  “Meaning women eighteen and over?” He turns onto the gravel road that ends at the parsonage. A pointless habit but she always scans clearings in the dark corridor of trees along the road, looking for clotted batches of bloodless leaves, for tire tracks that shouldn’t be there. “I could go down to sixteen.” She shakes her head in dismay. Look at her, negotiating with herself already, allowing the possibility of Ron winning. Wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

  It’s a fugitive-free week. In the kitchen he carves the rest of yesterday’s roast chicken. Slicing a tomato, she grasps the problem, says, “Silly me,” with an apologetic laugh
. “I didn’t tell you I decided against interviews. Too hard to schedule and still make my deadline. I’ll hand out the surveys instead. That makes a difference, doesn’t it? About the men?”

  “It’s safer, absolutely. But I wonder, sweetheart, if men wouldn’t be reluctant to answer questions from their pastor’s wife, might think the questions should come from me, given the subject. And on the subject of subject, why are you so keen on asking about war?”

  She turns to him, flummoxed by his logic, but he’s got his head down, arranging the chicken just so on a plate. She lifts a serrated knife out of the rack, draws a loaf from the breadbox. “Didn’t you preach that it’s one of the profound moral issues of our time?”

  “I did, and it is, but there must be dozens of issues women are more interested in.”

  “Vaginal infections? Babies?” Her knife meets the breadboard with a satisfying thwack.

  He turns to her with an injured look. “Give me some credit. With all the women’s lib talk, aren’t you curious to know our women’s thoughts about career opportunities, political participation, that sort of thing?”

  Our women?

  “Fern Vaske doesn’t want to run for office. She wants to keep her son out of the army.”

  He scrubs his hands then grants her the indulgent smile he uses with difficult parishioners. “All right. We don’t have to restrict it to our congregation, though. I’ll call Mom.”

  “What for?”

  He doesn’t say, steps to the wall phone and dials. When Grace answers, he says the two of them are tossing ideas around and think it would be better if Lin’s project, the one they talked about on Friday, focused on women. All the while, he makes eyes at her as if the phone call is interrupting some wild bout of lovemaking. A sensation she can’t identify assaults her ribcage, making it hard to breathe. He asks Grace if she’ll recruit women from her church. He nods, rubs his nose, says, “Okay,” and holds out the receiver. “Mom for you.”

  Ear on the warm receiver, she manages a “Hi.”

  He plucks a pickle jar from the fridge.

  Grace’s cashmere voice wraps its arms around her. “Did you ever watch Mama?”

  A bizarre question but Lin trusts her. She pulls up Friday nights as a girl, bookended by her parents on the ratty brown couch Mother hated because it had been Grandmother Wise’s and Daddy wouldn’t let it go—why’d that come to her now? “Yeah, I loved that show.”

  Ron slides two plates from the cupboard and deposits a pickle on each.

  “So did I. In one episode, the older daughter, Katrin—I think that’s her name—was in a progressive dinner party. Ever go on one?”

  “No.” The Wise family didn’t have what you’d call a Social Life.

  “Katrin was in charge of dessert but a conniving girl upstaged her by doing the main course and the dessert. Katrin telephoned Mama in tears from that girl’s house. Do you remember what Mama did?”

  “I must’ve missed that episode.” She watches in amazement as Ron sets out the mayonnaise, salt and pepper. He’s rarely this helpful.

  “She made popcorn and showed a movie, that’s what. It was a big hit.”

  Lin suppresses a laugh before it can turn into a cry. “Was it?”

  “You’re wondering what that has to do with the price of tea in China, right?”

  Ron starts assembling the sandwiches.

  “To me it says strong gals don’t give up when they’re thwarted,” Grace says. “Can you spend a while here after prayer breakfast tomorrow to discuss how I might help?”

  Lin says, “Hang on a sec, okay?”

  It’s crazy. She’s in a snug kitchen with a man who wants only to love and protect her, while countless others endure unspeakable horrors. Every second, the planet brushes thwarted gals and guys off its shoulders like so many dead cells. It would be easy to let this go. It’s only lunch, for crying out loud. But where’d she be if she’d let everything go?

  In the woods with her throat slit, that’s where.

  She muzzles the receiver and hotly whispers, “What’re you doing? That’s my job.”

  She’s up past midnight the Monday before Thanksgiving, finishing two proposals, embarrassed to go back to Dr. Schmidt and get another idea approved. She tells him her husband thinks the women-only plan has a greater chance of success but she’s prepared to go with either proposal depending on his opinion. He purses his lips and says, “You’re a plucky one.” She catches the pity in his eyes. Or is it scorn?

  18

  Thurs, Dec 8/66

  One foot tucked under me, listening to the radiator hiss, sipping tea made w/dried mint from Grace’s garden. Still light enough to see snow falling from trees in soft wet clumps outside my office window. Supposed to be reading Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas for Interim. Got sidetracked by Room of One’s Own. It’s making me aspire to more than I should.

  Supposedly Woolf was loony yet she published heaps before drowning herself. In my lowly undergrad opinion, she made too much sense for a nutcase. She said women should express their female minds, not imitate men, leave a legacy for other women: “I should remind you how much depends upon you & what an influence you can exert upon the future.” I wanted to throttle Mother when I read that. Why hasn’t she done more w/her life?

  Woolf quotes a Scottish composer paraphrasing Samuel Johnson: “Sir, a woman’s composing is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well but you are surprised to find it done at all.” True, he said it 40 years ago, yet I bet some men still believe that. I walked around campus today imagining male students wondering what a dog walking on her hind legs needs w/a degree. I wanted to share my indignation w/R but something held me back. I phoned Helen instead. What an asshole, she said about the composer. I laughed at her certainty. I’d never say that word out loud but I love writing it down.

  Glue tastes like Chiclets. Keyed up and proud, she licks one hundred fifty-six envelopes holding hand-written invitations to an “exclusive, women-only” survey at Open Door and Northfield Methodist. Ron has offered to plug it from the pulpit but she intends to soar or crash without him, has struck an alliance with Grace who’ll supervise the survey at her church on January eighth while Lin does the one at Open Door. It was Grace’s idea to not let the “gals” take the surveys home where men might dictate the answers.

  Unless a woman pens a dissertation in the comments section, the survey should take no more than fifteen minutes to complete. First step, choose one of five options for five statements:

  Trickier will be getting them to tick off the options their husbands, fathers and mothers might choose. Another challenge: determining financial independence. Who honestly has that? Even Ron relies on parishioner tithes. After agonizing over the phrasing, she settles on:

  Check all that apply. (Income earned includes that received from employment, investments, Social Security and other pensions.)

  Of the income required for my support: —I earn all —I earn half or more —I earn less than half —I earn none

  Despite all she does for the church, she’d have to answer “none.” That can’t be right.

  Grace’s Bible class invites Lin to preview the survey in a room shouting with red poinsettias. Thirty rouged and powdered women show up, all in proper hats and gloves, their mouths in pious smiles. Amazing the difference in congregations, mere miles apart. No ankle socks in lace-up shoes, no cheap suits that bag in the seat. The Northfield Methodist women dab on a lusher blend of perfumes, sport fancier hairdos. Lin wears the Going Away outfit from her wedding. The class insists she stand at the lectern. Her voice shivers at first. This church is so much grander than Open Door, intimidating. She focuses on a spot over the women’s heads, tells them each completed survey will go into a confidential, sealed envelope.

  One skeptic says, “What’s so confidential about it? Can’t you just take notes while
we tell you what we think about war?”

  Grace says, “We can do both. I’ll invite every gal who takes the survey to my house after the results are in and we can talk about war all we like. Okay with you, Lin?”

  Her spirits droop at the prospect of subjecting her work to free-for-all scrutiny but she doesn’t want to make Grace look bad, manages a smile and a “Sure.” Some women seem more interested in her than the survey. Does she intend to become a “career girl,” what does her husband think of her project, any plans to start a family? She feels herself shrink. Grace steps in and says she’s offering them a rare opportunity to be heard on a crucial topic. She doesn’t say the only ones who’ll hear them are Lin and a few professors.

  In a dream that night the women instruct her on crossing Northfield’s Division Street safely. There are so many ways to go and the lights keep changing. She doesn’t understand why she can’t walk directly from one side of the street to the other.

  Less than a third of those invited complete the survey on January eighth. Lin is downhearted until the Sociology prof grading her project lobs average response stats at her. He calls it a “decent sample,” although skewed, of course, by those who opted out and somewhat suspect because of her leading questions. She writes up her findings and receives an A, is too relieved to ask if everyone who simply completes Interim gets the same.

  Fri, Feb 10/67

  R was asleep when I got home last nite. First thing this morning he asked how it went at Grace’s. I said before or after Peter?

  Forty women show up at Grace’s house on a frigid Thursday evening in February, the Northfield women less perfect than they were at their church: hair frizzier, bodies looser in sweaters and slacks, not as many red lipsticked mouths and penciled eyebrows. The ten from Open Door blend right in. Grace has a fire going and the house glows with wellbeing. It smells of cinnamon cookies and strong tea in silver pots. Lin is lightheaded with apprehension. Since her blimp days, she’s found females in packs menacing. Will they pick her presentation apart? Ignore and talk over her? She’s glad her protest companions, the fragile Fern Vaske and the sturdier, wide-hipped Renate Schroeder, have shown up. Two more in her corner.