Becoming Lin

by Tricia Dower

  Sat, Jun 9/73

  It was 98 degrees & the gearshift hot as a poker as I drove away from Jackie’s today, mad as spit & wondering who was more delusional, she for conjuring Rhonda up or me for sitting there while she did. All I’d wanted was for Rhonda to descend from the mountaintop like Moses & tell me who & what to believe but she said: Some people use up their lives searching for the Truth. What’s the point? Believe whatever you want, the rain is gonna fall, might as well lift your face to it. Want to know a secret, babycakes? Everybody’s right & nobody is. You think some nebbish in a book knows better than you how to live your life? Stop reading. Start living.

  What am I supposed to do w/that?

  I asked her why I couldn’t forget Eldon Jukes.

  She said I brought the assault into my life to keep myself from other people. I wanted to punch her for that. She said keeping people away is safe but lonely. I hated her for making me cry but I was too cheap to get up & leave. I wanted my $50 worth. I’m mourning the money now.

  She wouldn’t tell me if I should live w/R again. Ask yourself what script you’re writing w/him in this life, she said. The secret word is “resistance.” Supposedly R & I are Jewish zealots opposing Roman occupation of the Promised Land. At the same time we’re Italians resisting Austrian rule and we’re mujahideen (I asked her to spell it) in Afghanistan. We’re also standing w/Geronimo & I’m a suffragette who dies in a Paris jail. I pictured this big stew of lives, simmering away in some ethereal dimension. The life resonating the most for me at the moment, Rhonda said, is in China. My husband in this life is my father in that one. When robbers kill him, I’m sent to live w/an uncle who rapes me. I die blaming R (playing my father) for falling victim to the robbers & leaving me to my sad fate.

  I said her stories were like fairy tales, no way to prove they’re true, & she said, Geronimo! Consider how they work. For happily-ever-after you have to break the spell. I asked her what spell I had to break. She said if she told me it wouldn’t work.

  My brain feels full of maggots.

  As improbable as Rhonda’s musings might be they seep like rainwater through the layers of Lin’s consciousness, saturate her imagination and send her mind to exotic lands, conjuring life after life with Ron. She and Ron could hold any manner of belief in each of those lives so what do differing views in this one matter? Maybe beliefs are just wishes, anyway, stories you’d like to be true. One afternoon, she leaves the office for the library that has Egyptian mummies in the basement and affirmative action plans in the stacks. The librarian helps her find the plans so quickly she has time to look up mujahideen. They lived in hills and fought against the Brits who branded them fanatics. She and Ron could be brothers in that fairy tale, Tavis with them, too. Fellow victims of some fate they can’t escape. Fanatics. Yeah.

  The rest of June slides by in a blur of radiant imaginings. She almost says, I’m in love again to a smiling woman who strikes up a conversation on the bus one day. She’s new to Lin’s stop and bright as a bird in a lime green dress, her lipsticked mouth like a deep red bill. The Wrestler hasn’t shown up for a while, good riddance.

  Her new job provides little shape to her days. No pile of folders from Actuarial. Only a pithy good-morning exchange with Rosemary. Lin meets with Mr. B weekly for twenty minutes max: a what-has-she accomplished confab, no idle chitchat. Rosemary’s no chatterbox either. She lets her fifteen annual perfect attendance pins speak for what she values, displays them on black velvet at her desk, like rare swallowtails. The office is quiet as midnight. She sweet-talks the philodendron as she does Charles’s tree, urging it to hold on to life, begging it to not add to her guilt. She chips away at Mr. B’s priorities, giving herself an attagirl for each small shaving.

  Ron gets a church in St. Louis Park, a five-minute drive from the Tree House. Not head pastor. No parsonage to live in. He’s okay with that, is more charged up, in fact, than she’s seen him in a while. The older, avuncular Pastor Meier wants him to form a Works of Justice and Mercy ministry. As luck (or God, the way Ron sees it) would have it, the Reverend Meier belongs to a right-to-life group Ron has joined and blesses Ron’s idea to rally the congregation around abortion restrictions and boycotts of companies making abortion supplies. Ever since the Supreme Court decided abortion is a fundamental right under the Constitution, Ron has been het up about it. “No one is more powerless than an unborn child,” he says.

  Lin isn’t so sure. She’s read that annual fatalities from medically unsafe abortions in the country are greater than casualties were each year in Vietnam.

  Ron has negotiated a September seventh start for Grace’s sake. She’s rented out her house until then and counts on staying in the parsonage. Lenny has found Ron, Lin and Tavis a two-bedroom for September. Lin feels like a bride again, eager for each tomorrow, her hope exploding into radiating moments of possibility. Grace will buy them a bedroom set from Ethan Allen, which Angel calls the Taj Mahal of furniture stores. They’ll put a dinette set and easy chair on layaway. Ron wants to look for a house near the church when Tavis is ready for first grade. If they find one, he says, their contract will specify that Daddy sees Tavis off to school and is there when he gets home. Mommy says, “Deal.”

  Sun, Jul 8/73

  5 years old! How can that be? We had the party yesterday so R could be there. He was great w/Anthony, Matty & Jolie. Sat on the floor, his Ichabod Crane legs reaching halfway across the living room, & described how he acquired every single Matchbox car, being sure to confirm they belong to T now. T kept saying that’s my Daddy, so proud to have what the others don’t. Jolie gave him Mr. Potato Head, Anthony and Matty an Evil Knievel action figure. After he opened each, he said, Oh, I’ve always wanted that. I was so moved by his kindness I had to look away. R was surprised I gave T a star, said tell me how this isn’t like Santa. I said easy, the star actually exists. A laminated paper certifies that a star has been named for our boy on the spot where the Little Dipper spills its water onto the tail of the Dragon. The certificate gives precise coordinates, like an address. T & I stood on the balcony last nite & again tonite to look at it. He thought the stars looked painted on. Grace came to the party. She gave T the Dick Tracy Squad Car R got for his 5th birthday—I’m touched she hung on to it all these years. The siren still works & was a big hit. She went on & on about how cute & funny R was when he was a kid. I felt sorry for her. Another 2 months & she’ll be alone again.

  53

  Thurs, Jun 28/73

  Mr. B catapulted me into a Personnel dep’t meeting to explore (his word) how they might work w/me on the Affirmative Action Plan. (Or how I might work with them? This job is more political than I anticipated.) Attending w/me were VP Gunderson, Lois Larsen, & Nick Hathaway, the new Benefits Manager. Larsen lobbed the first grenade, said we’re the ones who have to implement it, why are you involved at all?

  Gunderson explained that Mr. B had appointed me to help them document the plan, making me sound like an extra pair of hands, a summer student. I went thru my song & dance, bloated w/a new vocabulary: goals, targets & timetables, protected & underutilized groups. Larsen objected to what she perceived as quotas for hiring & promoting women & minorities. Not quotas, Gunderson said, goals. Hathaway said one cannot legislate talent; merit should be the only criterion for selecting an employee. (For a young guy he’s stuffy.) Larsen said it feels like we’ve been presumed guilty of discrimination. I said not so. She said if we have to draw up a plan, then we’ve been tried & convicted. I soldiered on, described the info we have to start collecting: the jobs men hold, the ones women do, whether they’re White, Black, Asian, American Indian or Hispanic which shouldn’t be too hard— LP isn’t exactly diverse. We also have to record the gender & race of everyone we interview, hire, promote & fire, anyone who quits too. I handed out samples of the required reports & charts. Rosemary had brilliantly prepared them, using the template I got from the library. Larsen asked if my extra hands were going t
o fill in those charts every day & Gunderson said no, she’s not authorized to see confidential employee data. Cue smug smile from Larsen. Cue smugger smile from me for not getting stuck w/grunt work. Back in my office I tackled Mr. B’s #2 priority: hire a psychologist to suss out talented female employees. Not having a clue where to find such a creature, I called Dr. Schmidt at St. Olaf. He gave me 3 names. How should I describe the assignment when I phone them? Separating the wheat from the chaff? Identifying lionesses most likely to mate in captivity?

  The employee newspaper runs an article about her and what she’ll be doing. A copy of it shows up in her in-tray a week later inside an envelope marked Personal and Confidential. Scrawled across her picture is “You need a good smashing up the arse.” The alien expression shocks her cold. Fear, like a diseased fly, crawls over her, threatens to sicken her. If she tells Mr. B or Ron, they’ll treat her like a helpless victim, want to take action. If she gets angry or upset, she’ll come across as hysterical or weak. At lunch in the cafeteria, she confides in Shirley, who says, “You must be doing something right. Somebody’s looking to shut you up.”

  Lin forces a laugh from her throat. “Yeah. I’ve gotten worse. Been threatened with arsenic, cyanide and the crosshairs of a musket.” It’s true, she realizes, as she takes her tray to the rack. This is just one more cowardly attempt to silence her. It’s not going to work.

  54

  Arms and legs slick with iodine and baby oil, Angel and Lin stretch out on deck chairs, swimsuits tight as bandages. Mascara tears slide down Ginger’s face behind round sunglasses so big they cover her cheekbones.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Angel says. “You didn’t use birth control?”

  “Yah we did, the Catholic kind. It worked with Sonny. After Jolie, at least.” She has shown up in white shorts, a purple halter-top and absurdly cheerful orange lipstick. Buck, who evidently subscribes to a morally flexible Catholicism, wants Ginger to have an abortion. She wants the baby.

  Lin scrapes her chair along the concrete to get close to Ginger. “How pregnant are you?”

  “Six weeks.” She cries fresh tears. “I peed in a pickle jar and took it to a lab.”

  Lin digs a tissue out of her towel bag and hands it to her. “Where’s Jolie?”

  “Buck took her to the movies. I was too shook up to go.” She pulls her top away from her chest to let in some air. The heat and humidity today are merciless, the pool warm as a bath.

  “He tells you to have an abortion then takes Jolie to the movies?”

  Ginger nods, blows her nose. “I don’t have insurance. Buck says he won’t pay for the delivery and he won’t pay support.”

  Angel stands and adjusts the crotch of her red suit. She hollers over to Matty who’s pressed against the chain link fence Lin finds about as classy as a zoo enclosure. Terror convulses his face. “Come here, honey, I won’t let Anthony splash you.” To Ginger she says, “Buck can say whatever he likes. You can sue him for support, assuming he doesn’t skip town and you can’t find him.” Matty scuttles to her like an agitated crab. She pulls him to her.

  “Where am I gonna get a lawyer? And I can’t see Uncle Fran letting me wait tables with a baby belly and no ring on my finger. He can’t afford to pay for my time off, either. He’s barely making expenses. I can’t take a newborn to work and I don’t earn enough for daycare.” Her face collapses into despair. “It’s hopeless.”

  “Somebody might want to adopt the baby,” Lin says, “pay for everything until you can get back to work.” She has the crazy notion she and Ron could be that somebody, envisions stroking downy infant skin again.

  Ginger draws in a huge breath, like a swimmer coming up for air. “I’d rather kill this baby than give it to somebody else.”

  Angel gasps, claps her hands over Matty’s ears. “Watch what you say.” She pulls animal crackers out of a bag, sets Matty up on a deck chair out of earshot.

  Lin is unnerved too. “What about welfare?”

  “And have the world think I’m a loser?”

  “Who’d think that?”

  “Everybody who says, ‘At least I’m not on welfare.’ It’s no substitute for a man. Mom was on it for years until the motel job. She sure felt like a loser.” She shakes her head. “Know what I remember about my pa? He’d grip your hand so hard you’d think he broke it, look you straight in the eye like somebody you thought you could trust. He traveled on his job, met chicks who said all the good guys had been taken—like he wasn’t. He told Mom they couldn’t believe their luck in finding him, thought she’d find it as fascinating as he did. After he left, some shriveled up bitch from welfare tried to get me to say Mom was shacking up with somebody and didn’t need a handout. I was ten. My mother was pretty enough to shack up with anybody but she didn’t. Kept hoping the bum would come back. No ma’am, that’s not for me.”

  Angel shouts, “Slow down!” at Anthony who’s running giddily around the pool, palms pressing his head in glee. She turns to Ginger. “Your father didn’t pay support?”

  “Not a penny.” She starts to cry again. “Why do men leave me? If I don’t have an abortion, Buck will too.”

  “Would that be so bad?” Lin says.

  Angel pulls her sunglasses down and gives Lin a look. “I watched David Brinkley’s rant about welfare moms, what would happen if we forced them to work. Why is federal funding always ‘massive’ when it goes to women and children but not when it goes to war? We should pay moms to stay home with their kids if that’s best for everybody.”

  “I’d love it if somebody paid me to stay home,” Ginger says. “I thought Buck would do that if we had a baby.” Her words dangle in the punishing heat.

  Angel’s sigh breaks the silence. “I couldn’t stay home. I like being with other adults.”

  “Not me,” Ginger says. “Some of my customers are jerks. They complain about the stupidest things.”

  Angel smiles at Lin. “Like a roach in the rice pudding?”

  Ginger says, “Oh God, the cook thought it was a raisin.” She shakes her head. “She’s a dumb cluck.”

  “The cockroach didn’t eat much,” Lin says quietly, her mind still cradling a baby.

  Matty is back. “Knock, knock,” he says and grins, his teeth coated with animal crackers.

  Angel says, “Who’s there?”

  “Amos.” He can hardly contain himself.

  Ginger gives him a brave smile and says, “Amos who?” Lin could hug her for that.

  “A mosquito bit me.”

  Sat, Jul 21/73

  The deed is done. Buck Cordoza, cad extraordinaire, couldn’t take a chance on being seen there, so I drove Ginger to the hospital in St. Paul this morning, a few blocks from where Artie & I marched forever ago. I dropped her off, went to park the car & spotted the woman who chats w/me on the bus every day. Small world. I waved but she didn’t wave back, must not have recognized me out of context.

  It was easy as pie for Ginger to get an appointment. That’s what bugs R so much. The Supreme Court says it’s between a woman & her doctor the first 3 months. After that, states can set a few conditions. (R wants Minnesota to make it darn near impossible.) Surgery took a ½ hr. Another 3 hrs until she crawled out of the anesthetic fog enough to go home. I forgot to bring a book so I meditated on my plastic chair, wondering whether it had consciousness—Seth would say so—& whether Ginger’s embryo did too. Did the chair in fact exist? The embryo? I read somewhere we agree telepathically there’s a chair but see only our own idea of it, not anyone else’s. The chair isn’t even solid. Just one big illusion of electromagnetic forces I’m too stupid to understand. All I know is that what I used to believe was solid in a different way isn’t, like love, trust, joy, honor, commitment.

  Ginger looked as fragile as a glass slipper when she came out & her eyes seemed darker, serious. I took her home, settled her on the couch. Jolie was w/Angel & her boys
at the Hopkins Raspberry Festival. Ginger was dying for a smoke. I lit one of her Marlboros for her & it was like taking fiberglass into my lungs. My eyes watered & she laughed, breaking my heart. Not sure I’d be able to laugh after having a part of me scraped away.

  She intends to be back at work on Monday. Uncle Fran is waiting all the tables tonite, thinks she had her tonsils out. Big shot Buck sent a dozen yellow roses. She expected him to phone but he didn’t, not while I was there at least. I warmed up a can of chicken noodle soup for her. She said it’s Friday, right? I said No, it’s Saturday, & the little air left in her seemed to escape. She told me her mother made fish sticks & fries every Friday when she was a kid & they’d eat them straight off the baking pan while they watched the Flintstones. I wished so badly I could do that for her.

  55

  Wed, Aug 1/73

  Held a Lunch & Learn for LP’s general agents today about recruiting female agents. The GAs were in for a product launch, a few complaining they’d had to interrupt summer vacations, asking why it couldn’t have waited until after Labor Day. The L&L was my idea. Mr. B said go for it, kicked it off, made it clear that by this time next year he wants a 500% increase in the # of women agents. Considering we have only one (out in Denver) that’s not a big leap. I was the only woman in the room, infecting it w/my girl germs, thinking about how brave little Ruby Bridges was when she walked into that southern white school all by herself. I made my voice stronger than I felt, didn’t want to let down the women who’d signed the petition.

  I brought in a trade org exec to present the financial benefits of hiring women to sell insurance. He had impressive slides showing how women’s earnings constitute an increasing share of household income & that w/their new responsibilities women are making financial decisions. And, whaddya know? Working mothers are now a Market. (I’m so proud, ha, ha.) Companies out east are way ahead of us in hiring saleswomen. He reminded the guys they’re not selling insurance but self-respect, something women are seeking in droves these days. And who better than another woman to understand and build a sales pitch on that. I thought about R, selling not just God but hope. There’s so little truth in what anyone’s selling these days.