Mira poked and prodded. What about his wife, what was she like? What had she done after the split? Were there children? What was he aiming to do, teach? Was he really intelligent or just an expert?
‘My God, gal, are you planning to marry him?’
‘Val, he’s the first interesting man I’ve met since I’ve been here!’
Val sighed and sat back, gazing at Mira affectionately. ‘I just don’t know anything more to tell you.’
‘Tell me about Grant. I hardly know anything about Grant.’
‘Oh, he’s a pain. Grant is a pain. I’ve had it with him.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, you’ve seen him. He’s socially a klutz, he’s too egotistical, he’s a grouch, he’s … he’s a man, for God’s sake, he thinks only about himself, self, self, and his fragile, precious ego.’
‘Why did you like him? How did you meet him?’
‘Oh, a couple of years ago I was working with a group that was involved with Cambridge politics. We were trying to do something about the way they treat blacks in the school. Although we didn’t say that. For instance, they have a class for foreign-speaking students. That sounds okay, but in fact, it’s all black. The kids mostly speak French – they’re from the islands. They put them in this room with whatever teacher happens to be in disgrace this year – usually a new teacher who tried to side with a black student about something the year before – and leave them there. The teacher doesn’t speak anything but English, the kids don’t speak English. Some people tried to get some of the kids in the French class at least, but the Cambridge school system – a real peach, I tell you – vetoed that. But their day will come. They’re going to have a problem on their hands one of these days. The point is the kids will suffer for that too. Anyway, we were just looking in, trying to see what could be done, trying to get black parents involved. And for some reason, Grant came to one of the meetings. Afterwards he came up to me, his eyes really glowing, and he said, “I just want to tell you I think you’re great.” Something like that. We talked for a while. I didn’t find him very appealing – why don’t I stick with my first impressions? – but I thought he was intelligent and had decent values. He said he didn’t like where he was living and was looking for a commune. At the time I was living in a commune in Somerville, and we were down to six people. It took eight to keep the place going. So I told him about it, and he came over one night and looked it over and he liked it and he moved in.
‘And one night – oh, a long time later – I went into his room and got in bed with him. We’ve been lovers since, although since I moved out we’ve been less close. He still lives there.’
‘Why did you go to his bed?’
Val thought. ‘It was because of the ants.’
‘Ants!’
‘It was one night at the dinner table. The whole group of us was sitting around. I don’t know how the subject came up. But Grant had apparently spent some time studying ants. He was fascinated by them. He talked about them for a long time, their kinds, their characteristics, their social organization, their mutual rules – morality, if you will. He was fascinating. And while he was talking, he forgot himself. He was completely unselfconscious, something Grant isn’t very often. And he looked so beautiful. It was before he grew the beard. He was radiant, his eyes glowed, he was expansive, excited, passionate. He wanted us to know, to understand, to love the ants! And I loved him for that, that night anyway, and for some time after. Unfortunately,’ she concluded, ‘it only happens about ants.’
Then Mira asked Val about Neil, the man she’d been married to; then Val asked Mira about Norm. Then Mira told Val about Lanny, and Val told Mira about some of her other lovers. The conversation grew more and more intimate, more and more honest. They were laughing so hard their pants got damp. They drank, they laughed, they talked. They felt lusciously wicked, wonderfully free, saying to each other things neither of them would say to anyone else.
At about three, Mira said, ‘Will you listen to us? We could be a couple of teenagers talking about all the boys we’ve had crushes on.’
‘Yeah. And for all the raking over they’re getting, they’re still at the center of our conversation.’
‘Well, Val, that’s natural. I mean, your work is central to you, but if you talked to me about it, I’d probably fall asleep. And vice versa.’
At four, Val rose wearily. ‘It has been really great, Mirabelle.’
They kissed good night and held each other for a moment as if each were the only solid object in the world. Then Val left and the light began to pour into the apartment and Mira said, ‘Damn!’ and went around pulling shades down and cursing out the fucking birds.
19
Contrary to her custom, Mira went to every meeting of the peace group after that. ‘I can’t imagine why,’ Val drawled sarcastically.
‘I have found a real dedication to the cause,’ Mira smiled with mock hauteur.
But Ben did not appear, and Mira was in despair. After a month, when she was ready to quit, he showed up. The moment she saw him in the room, her heart began to beat wildly. In irritation, she scolded herself. Anyone who’s the least bit likely you build into a knight on a horse. Still, she could not keep her heart still or her vision straight. She heard nothing at all of what happened at the meeting that night. She kept saying to herself, he probably has smelly feet, and I’ll bet he sits in the john for an hour with a magazine and stinks the place up. He probably voted for Nixon, or else he’s a vegetarian and lives on soy curd and brown rice. Or he thinks Ernest Hemingway is the greatest American novelist. Her self-exhortations did not, however, have any effect on her pulse rate. And since she had heard nothing during the meeting, she also had nothing to go over and talk to him about afterward. She sat feeling like a lump, trying to look poised, wondering if he would come over to her, and now her heart was really thumping. But he was surrounded by a group of people, and did not move. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Val go over to Ben and join the group. She could not hear them: her ears were thumping too hard. But she could notice Val gesticulating, hear Val’s voice, Val’s laugh. Val was being brilliant, she thought, and hated her. Why? she almost cried. She has Grant, she doesn’t need Ben. She sat in the middle of her pulsing blood and felt tears in her eyes.
Suddenly Val was beside her, touching her on the arm. ‘Ready to go, kid?’
Mira rose stiffly and followed Val out. She did not know what to say or how to say it; she was not sure she would be able to speak at all without bursting into tears.
‘Well,’ Val said cheerfully, ‘I hope you’re free Saturday night.’
‘Why?’ she asked numbly.
‘Oh, I’m having a few people for dinner. Chris and Bart and Grant and me and you and Ben. It just came to me, like a stroke of light! Actually,’ she turned to Mira, ‘I looked at you during the meeting and saw you were gone. I figured it would take you months to get off your ass. And God knows you can’t expect them to figure anything out. They just go home and daydream and masturbate. Or don’t masturbate. So I took things into my dishpan hands. Hope you don’t mind.’
Mira was not sure what Val was saying. She tried to absorb the words, she stuttered out questions, and finally understood. ‘Val!’ she cried, and turned and hugged her friend. They were on the sidewalk, and people passing turned and looked at them. But Mira didn’t care.
‘Listen, Mira, don’t get so hyper yet, okay?’ Val pleaded. ‘You don’t really even know him.’
‘Okay, I won’t,’ Mira said obediently, and Val laughed.
‘Right,’ she said, and they both laughed.
The evening of the dinner she arrived early. Only Val and Chris, and Bart, Chris’s friend, were there. They were all in the kitchen. Val was stirring something, Chris was cutting something, and Bart was setting the table. They were also arguing.
‘I can do anything I want,’ Bart was protesting. ‘Even though I flunked chemistry twice, I could get into Harvard. Man, we got them so buffa
loed!’
‘Wonderful,’ Val commented sarcastically. ‘When they kept you out it was because you were black; when they let you in, it is because you are black. That’s progress?’
Bart looked at her with affectionate eyes. ‘You might as well use the current while it’s going for you.’
‘Sure. But I don’t see you doing that.’
‘I’m involved in more important things,’ Bart announced haughtily, then doubled over in laughter.
‘Yeah, dealing dope,’ Chris drawled.
‘That’s an act of social concern!’
They were all laughing when Grant walked in. Suddenly Bart leapt to his feet, flew across the kitchen waving his fist, and yelled, ‘As I was saying!’
Mira’s heart stopped. Chris’s involvement with Bart challenged all her nicely erected mental structures. Always opposed to any sort of prejudice, always insisting on complete intercourse between groups, Mira had been a liberal since her childhood. Her liberalism had been made easy by the fact that she knew no black people except for a physician who was a colleague of Norm’s (and whom she disliked), and no American Indians or Chicanos at all. She had been shocked the first time she met Bart; she remained nervous at the easy argumentativeness – always present in Val’s house – between Bart and Chris and Val. Someplace in the back of her mind, she realized, she expected the banter or discussion to erupt into violence, expected Bart to pull a knife and kill them all. She had not, despite some mind-searching, been able to get over this sense of things. So when Bart – as she saw it – went for Grant, she paled. But the others were all laughing. Grant was shaking his fist at Bart. ‘You’re just a stupid ass, man!’ he yelled back, and Bart was yelling back.
They sat down opposite each other at the table. Mira, standing at the counter pouring wine, eased herself toward the wall. Val looked at her. ‘They have a continuing argument,’ she said softly. Mira watched them.
They did not talk, they yelled. Each of them picked up a piece of the silverware Bart had recently laid down, and shook it at the other. They – no, Bart – was half-laughing. Grant was serious. They were arguing about – it took awhile to decode – the proper form for minority protest. Bart was in favor of tanks and guns; Grant was in favor of law school.
‘Get into the power structure, that’s the only way to defeat it!’
‘Shit, man, you get into it, it’ll eat you alive! By the time it’s through with you, you’re as lily white as it is! They buy your soul, and wash it, bleach it, until it’s whiter than whitey’s.’
Suddenly Val yelled ‘OUT!’ They both looked up. Calmly, preparing to peel a carrot, she said, ‘Would you care to continue in the other room? I can’t stand the noise.’
Still talking, arguing, Bart standing around while Grant poured himself some wine, they walked together into the other room. Mira looked at Val. ‘I’d have thought you’d want to get into that.’
Val groaned. ‘They have been over that and over that and over that. At least ten times. They just like to argue. And I don’t like to waste my energy on futile arguments. They’re both just talking. What’s the point of their sitting around deciding on the proper way to change society? Some people are going to use guns, some are going to use different forms of power. And it’s also ridiculous. Bart is a really gentle guy: he’d fight if he had to, but he’d rather not. And Grant – underneath that monastic, ascetic exterior, is a killer. He has the temper of a savage, old style, when they swung from trees.’
‘Yeah,’ Chris mused. ‘That’s true, you know? Remember the night, Mommy, when he got mad at you and threw over the whole cocktail table? The heavy one? With everything on it. He smashed a lot of things,’ she turned to Mira, ‘and completely ruined the tabletop. Then he stalked out and left the mess for us to clean up.’
‘One of his more heroic moments,’ Val said dryly.
‘But, Mom,’ Chris turned her soft young face to Val seriously, ‘how can you say that? How can you say there’s no point in talking about the proper way when you’re always talking about the proper way to build a society?’
Val sighed deeply. ‘Look, honey, I know this is going to sound like rationalization. But there’s a difference between asking what people need and trying to come up with some inadequate blueprint or other – which is what I do – and saying, “Everybody should do thus and so.” Which is what they’re doing.’
‘I don’t see that they’re so different.’
‘Maybe they’re not.’ Val rested her hand in her chin. ‘But I’m not doing it in order to have battle with somebody. They’re trying to one-upman each other. Or out-shout each other.’
‘Ummm.’ Chris considered.
Will you look at us?’ Mira laughed. ‘The men in the living room and the women in the kitchen. Just like always.’
‘I’d rather be here,’ Chris said.
‘Cooking!’ Val exclaimed, and leaped up and began to stir something.
Someone knocked at the door. Mira, who had totally forgotten Ben, felt her heart knock. One of the men opened the door, there was a conversation in the hall, steps approached the kitchen. She was gazing out the window. Her face felt hot.
‘Hi, Ben,’ Val said, and Mira turned smiling but Ben was kissing Val on the cheek and then he handed her a bottle of wine in a paper bag, and she thanked him and they were talking and the smile felt stiff on Mira’s face and finally he turned and Val turned and Val said, ‘You know Mira, don’t you?’ and he smiled and moved toward her with his hand outstretched and said, ‘Yes, but I didn’t know your name,’ and Val introduced Chris and they talked and the smile was petrified on Mira’s face and she could not say a word.
They took their wine and went into the living room. ‘What do you say we play a different game?’ Val said as they entered.
‘Which one are we playing now?’ Grant asked ominously.
‘Empty rhetoric,’ she said cheerfully, and passed around a tray of canapés. Bart giggled.
Grant grimaced. ‘You really are too much, Val. You get up in the preaching box at the slightest whim, but anybody else’s arguments are just empty rhetoric to you.’
‘I talk about real things.’
‘My ass!’
‘Yeah, I guess your ass is real. Sometimes,’ she glanced at him threateningly. ‘Ben’s an expert on Africa, I’m told,’ she said in a social voice.
‘The only thing I can claim to be an expert on is my own digestive system,’ Ben grinned. ‘I’d be glad to tell you all about that.’
Grant turned away. Bart leaned forward with interest.
‘Were you in Africa? Where? How long? What was it like? How did they feel about you?’ Bart had a bagful of questions, and Ben answered them easily, leisurely, anecdotally, yet underneath his narrative ran a passionate interest, a loving commitment. Everyone listened intently. It felt as if they were hearing truth, not absolute truth, but one person’s considered, honest truth. Mira, remembering the conversation between Chris and Val in the kitchen, thought she understood what Val had meant. So many conversations consist of a position prejudicially adopted, and defended to the death. This was different: Ben was saying things that hurt him to say, things he wished were not true, and things he gloried in. Her stomach stirred for him. But he did not once look at her. He was talking to Bart, and whenever possible, to Grant.
Mira had another drink, and another. She went out to the kitchen ostensibly to help Val. ‘What do you think?’ she attacked.
Val grinned. ‘I like him. He may be a little mcp. But maybe not. Social modes and all that. I think he’s decent.’
‘Decent’ was Val’s highest term of praise short of greatness. Mira was satisfied. But when they went back, Ben still did not look at her. Mira was getting drunk. She leaned her head back, her head floaty, far from the conversation.
Ben was attractive – very. She would like – she blushed as she felt it, although she did not let the words enter her mind – she would like to screw him. Her vagina felt wet and open just lo
oking at him. And she was lonely. But it dawned on her as she sat there that her loneliness had, over the past months, become a formula more than not. She was not actively feeling lack these days. Her loneliness – my God, had this always been so? – had been largely caused by her sense that she was supposed to have a man, supposed to have someone, or else be the pathetic woman in the rain, staring into a lighted house. Yes, Ben was attractive, and intelligent, and he seemed decent. Mira did not know why Val had said he was an mcp. She tried to make a note to ask Val about that. But suppose Ben did not find her attractive? Suppose he was involved with someone else? Suppose nothing came of tonight?
She would be fine. She was fine. A weight seemed to drift from her heart. It’s because I’m drunk, she thought. Things don’t matter so much when you’re drunk.
They went into the kitchen for dinner. Val sat Mira between Ben and Bart. They had a shrimp bisque, praised it, and talked about food. Ben described Lianese food. Grant, still sulky and eating greedily, finished and wiped his beard, and described the rotten dried-out food his mother had cooked. Bart laughed.
‘Man, you don’t know dried-up food until you’ve eaten my aunt’s. She isn’t really my aunt,’ he told Mira, ‘she’s just the only person who’s willing to take me. Anyway, she’s a nice old lady, and she gets the check from the welfare, and she cooks spaghetti. On Monday, she cooks spaghetti, and she leaves it in the pot. She cooks two pounds, and it sits there. She never puts it away. By Friday, man! the spaghetti is ready to sprout. It is so dry, it crackles!’
They laughed. ‘You exaggerate!’ Mira exclaimed.
‘No, he doesn’t,’ Chris said in a low, dry voice, sounding like her mother.
‘She’s a good lady, though,’ Bart added. ‘She doesn’t have to have me. It’s ’cause she’s so old, I guess. She hardly eats anything herself. She gives me practically all the money she gets for keeping me. For clothes, she says.’
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