The Collective: A Novel

by Don Lee

  “Why not?” Jessica asked.

  “It might take years to litigate, and it’d entail an enormous amount of resources and money, and still we might not win, especially in the current climate.”

  “But this is Cambridge,” Joshua said. “I can’t believe this is happening in fucking Cambridge.”

  “There are powerful constituencies at work, well-funded ones on the extreme right, and they’re driven by a general hysterical fear of the unknown, which of course is, at its root, about intolerance.”

  “Barboza’s got to be a closet queen,” Jessica said. We turned to her, faltering over the non sequitur. “So there’s nothing we can do?” she asked.

  “There’s one tactic I can suggest,” Margolies said. “File a criminal complaint of malicious destruction.” He cited Chapter 266, Section 127, of the Massachusetts General Laws, which set the penalty for wanton destruction of personal property at a maximum of ten years in prison or a fine based on the value of the property. “It’s unlikely he’d get any jail time, but it’d be an expeditious way for us to make our point.”

  “What are the chances he’d be convicted?” Joshua asked.

  “Fifty-fifty,” Margolies admitted.

  “How long would it take to litigate?” I asked.

  “We could submit the complaint as early as Monday, the arraignment would be in a week or two, the trial five or six months after that.”

  “What about the costs?” Jessica asked.

  “We’re willing to do this pro bono,” Margolies said. “There is a monetary threshold, however, for filing the charge as a felony. We need to be able to claim that Barboza caused damage in excess of $250. Is that something we can claim?”

  I could see Jessica mentally tallying the expenditures for the repair material, which could not have been much.

  “You should also factor in the reduction in the mannequins’ market value, since they’re no longer in their original condition,” Margolies said. “That loss would be irrevocable, I imagine.”

  Jessica had arbitrarily priced the mannequins at $3,000 apiece, never believing anyone would buy them. “In that case,” she said, “yes, definitely more than $250 in damage.”

  “All right, then, we can do this,” Margolies said. “But I have to warn you, if we go forward, you’ll have to be prepared for the resultant shitstorm. It won’t be just Barboza. The Christian Coalition and other factions will probably marshal their forces to support him under all sorts of guises. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were protests and dirty tricks to try to discredit you and the 3AC.”

  “Are you shitting me?” Joshua asked.

  “No, I’m deadly serious.”

  “That’s beautiful, man,” Joshua said. “This will be war.”

  Margolies gave us the weekend to think it over.

  As Sunday evening approached, one 3AC member after another phoned to say he or she could not make the potluck that week. All good reasons—a deadline, a relative or a friend visiting, a gig out of town, tickets to a show. Jimmy was the only one available. When he heard no one else was coming, he said he’d give this one a miss. Grace didn’t bother to call at all.

  I made pajeon—scallion pancakes—from the batter I had already prepared, and Joshua, Jessica, and I ate them with rice and kimchi in the kitchen.

  “I checked these guys out,” I told them. “The CCFE. They’re a bunch of kooks. They want to ban prayer in the schools and eliminate the word God from all government entities, including money.”

  “So they’re atheists. More power to them,” Jessica said.

  “Yeah? You know they also support NAMBLA?” The North American Man/Boy Love Association. “They’ve gone to court for convicted sex offenders. They’re trying to get the sale and distribution of child pornography legalized.”

  “That’s nothing new,” Joshua said. “The ACLU’s been doing that for years. When you’re trying to protect civil liberties in absolute terms, you end up having to defend the indefensible.”

  “I think we should let everyone have a say in this,” I said. “It affects the rest of the 3AC. We should tell them what’s going on and put it up for a group vote.”

  “Screw that,” Joshua said. “Do you see anyone else here? Fucking cowards. The first sign of trouble, they bail.”

  “They all had legitimate excuses this weekend.”

  “Every single one of them? By coincidence?”

  “Let’s wait until next Sunday,” I said. “They’ll all be back then.”

  “That’s bullshit, and you know it. They deserted us. It’s just us now. We’re the only group that matters. What’s your problem? This is just like at Mac. Why are you so afraid?”

  This was not just like Macalester. I had always regretted my initial reluctance to act then, chagrined by my passivity, and I had been committed to proceeding now. I wanted apologies. I wanted retractions. I wanted denunciations. Yet that was before Margolies had promised a circus. I did not want that kind of strife or notoriety. Not over this.

  “This just doesn’t feel right,” I said. “It might escalate and get out of hand, and that’s exactly what Margolies wants. That’s why they’re pursuing this. They’re not looking out for us at all. They want to use us.”

  “I’m being publicly humiliated, and now you are, too,” Jessica said. “You’re going to let that pass? This is about our dignity.”

  “Once Barboza made the egg roll comment, he crossed the line,” Joshua said. “He made it racial. There’s no way we can back down now. The crazies and detractors will come out, but so will supporters and admirers. This will make us famous. It’ll help our careers, I’m not too disingenuous to say. And the timing couldn’t be better for you and me, bro, with the Fiction Discoveries issue coming out next month.”

  “That shouldn’t be our motivation,” I said.

  “No? Let’s not be naive. We can’t sit around waiting for things to happen. We’ve got to make them happen. Nothing’s going to fall in our laps. That only happens to beautiful white people. I’m telling you, that photo of us in the Record, someday it’ll be reprinted in magazines and biographies as a watershed moment for the three of us.”

  I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with Joshua, but I tried to sway Jessica privately when we were in the basement later, doing laundry.

  “This is a mistake,” I said.

  “I’ve become a joke,” she said, putting her clothes in the washer after I had moved my load to the dryer. “I’ve got to salvage my reputation.”

  “You can do that with another exhibition.”

  “No one’s going to give me another show now—not if I let this go. Joshua’s right. Even if the shit comes down, at least my name as an artist will get out there.”

  “Are you sure it’s worth it?” I asked. “Are you sure that’s how you want to make your mark?”

  “Are you implying the show’s not worth defending?” she asked. “That it’s something I should be ashamed of?”

  “I wish you had exhibited your paintings,” I said, looking at the stacks of canvases against the wall. “I think these are wonderful. I really think that’s the direction you should’ve followed.”

  “Don’t obfuscate. Answer my question. Say what you really mean.”

  “Why do you think all those other organizations wouldn’t take the case? Purely out of legal considerations?”

  “Answer me.”

  “Maybe,” I told her, “the Globe review had some validity. Maybe there could have been more substance, fewer gimmicks.”

  “You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve,” Jessica said. “I can’t believe this, coming from you. You’ve written one good story in your life, and you took what could have been Esther’s slot in the Discoveries issue, no compunction whatsoever, even though you’re on the staff. For what?”

  “That’s not fair,” I said. “I did have compunctions. A lot of them. I wanted to pull my story. Joshua convinced me not to.”

  “And he’s the god of propriety,” Jessica
said. “I hate the bitch right now, but Esther’s the real deal. You know that. She works hard, she deserves to be recognized. Whereas you’re always complaining you don’t have time to write. Let me ask you: When will you? Will you ever do anything instead of just talking about it? Maybe you should just quit, Eric. Give up trying. The world doesn’t need another dilettante, and that’s all you’ve ever been.”

  Barboza filed a counter-complaint against Jessica, Chapter 272, Section 29, for public dissemination of obscene and pornographic materials, which was punishable by a maximum of five years or a fine of $10,000. Both the malicious destruction and obscenity complaints would be heard in ten days by the clerk magistrate of the Third District Court of Middlesex County, who would determine if criminal charges should go forward against either party.

  “This is scandalous,” Barboza told the Globe. “I can’t believe she and her misfit cronies want to waste taxpayer money on this. But if they want a fight, I’ll give them one.”

  This time, in addition to newspaper reporters, local TV crews showed up at the house, and Margolies and Joshua were all too happy to grant interviews.

  “Freedom is about tolerating what you might despise,” Margolies said. “If you can’t do that, you’re un-American.”

  “It’s clear with the councilman’s recent remarks,” Joshua said, “that he’s a bigot. We’re demanding his resignation. We will not condone this kind of racist conduct. Asian Americans will not be anyone’s patsies.”

  Some City Council members began to backpedal from their initial decision not to cancel the show. “It’s possible that the exhibit constitutes a form of artistic recklessness,” the vice mayor said. One of the Arts Council members alleged that she did not know the exhibit would contain sexually explicit material when they had approved the project—a barefaced lie, since Jessica’s application had described exactly what she planned to do, her only alteration using casts of real genitalia instead of sex toys.

  With increased ardor, the story was rehashed on talk radio stations, and the head columnist for the Boston Herald, Joe Quinney, addressed the subject with particular zeal. “Over in the People’s Republic of Cambridge,” he wrote, “where the diversity-university PC police run amok and City Hall is banned from displaying Christmas trees, it’s apparently permissible to display your private parts in public, as long as you call it ‘art.’ ” (“P-p-please. Is it possible to alliterate any more than that?” Joshua said.) “This is yet another example of the sordidness polluting our society, where this cheap, imitation Mapplethorpe with penis envy is being allowed to parade her perversions in a public place.” (“Yes, it’s possible!” Joshua cackled.)

  Paviromo, in one of his rare visits to the Palaver office, asked me, very amused, “What in the world is going on in that house of yours? I didn’t think you had it in you, my boy.”

  There followed, as Margolies predicted, protests and rallies. Demonstrators gathered in front of the City Hall Annex with signs that read THE FIRST AMENDMENT DOES NOT PROTECT FILTH, STOP PORNOGRAPHY NOW, GOD HATES SINNERS.

  Anonymous hate mail was sent to the house, and anonymous hate phone messages were left on the machine: “You gooks are pervs” and “Fucking chink whore, go back to China.”

  We unlisted the number and stopped answering the telephone. “Still think this was such a great idea?” I said to Joshua.

  “Give me the damn code so I can erase this shit.”

  “No. We might need the tape later for evidence.”

  The story was picked up by the wires, the AP writing “City Councilor Charged in Stolen Porn Case,” and presumably the article was reprinted in the Saratogian, the local paper in Saratoga Springs, for one evening I came home to find that Jessica’s father had called the house. They had had no communication in seven years, although, surreptitiously, her mother and younger sisters had been in occasional touch with Jessica.

  Her father had left a two-sentence message on the answering machine. “You shame me,” he said. “You are not my daughter.”

  I knocked on her door. “Jessica?” She was lying on her bed in the dark, turned toward the wall.

  “You heard it,” she said.

  “I heard it,” I said, squatting down on the futon.

  She sat up and leaned her back against the wall to face me. “I should have listened to you,” she said. “I never thought it’d get so crazy.”

  I don’t think any of us really had. At Mac, with Kathryn Newey, everything had gone so peaceably, so easily for us, we had been lulled into believing that we would be sheltered from true adversity. “It’ll die down soon,” I said. “It can’t get any worse, right?”

  In the last two days, she had been told by Martinique College of Art that her contract as a teacher would not be renewed, and she had been fired from Gaston & Snow.

  “I’m finished as an artist,” Jessica said.

  “You’d be surprised how quickly people forget things. In a year, maybe even less, I bet no one will remember any of this.”

  “I went to Mount Auburn Hospital this morning,” she told me.

  “You did?” Reflexively I thought about Mirielle, wondered if she was still a medical secretary there, if she had heard from any MFA programs, if she was still seeing the temp. “Was it another panic attack?” I asked.

  Jessica picked up her wrist braces. “My hands have been killing me. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so last week I went in to find out about the surgery, and they did a bunch of tests. I got the results today. After all these years, now they tell me I might not have carpal tunnel at all. They think I might have rheumatoid arthritis.”

  I didn’t know anything about the condition. “Is it treatable?”

  “It’s chronic and progressive.” She flexed her hand, opening and closing her fingers, the tattoo of the green peacock quill on her forearm pulsing. “They don’t know, it might be a different kind of arthritis altogether. I’m supposed to see a rheumatologist next month. But I went over to Longwood”—where she proofread part-time for the New England Journal of Medicine—“and did some research. It all fits, all the symptoms. My bones could start fusing. My fingers could twist up and become permanently deformed. It might get so I can’t grip a paintbrush or craft knife anymore.”

  The image of Jessica crippled, no longer being able to do what she loved most, was heartbreaking. “Try not to dwell on it right now,” I said. “Wait till you hear from the rheumatologist.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jessica said. “I don’t think I was ever cracked up to be an artist in the first place.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “The mannequins,” she said, “they were just a device. The Globe critic saw right through me. You did, too. All the stuff with the 3AC, everything we’ve been spouting off about since Mac, they’ve been a crutch. It’s been a way of adding agency to my work when there hasn’t been any. I’m just a technician with nothing to say, really. Maybe I should have just gone to med school.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong, Jessica.”

  “Am I? What’s it mean, then? What’s the point? Why can’t I do something of substance, like you said, something real, something from here”—she jabbed her fist against her gut—“and not from here?”—she knocked her fist against the side of her head. “From here”—she hit her stomach again, harder—“not from here”—she punched her head. “From here—”

  I grabbed her wrists. “Stop it, Jessica.”

  She was crying now. “All the hoopla, even before it all turned to shit, I ask myself, Did I really want this? Any of it? Because the truth is, if I could take it all back, I would.”

  “It’s not too late,” I said.

  “It’s too late.”

  “We could drop the complaint.”

  “Even if we did, Barboza would never let it go. It’s an election year. He wants a trial. This is the most fun he’s ever had.”

  “Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”

  “I wish it could all go away,” Jessica said.
“I wish it could all just end.”

  I knew from news reports that Vivaldo Barboza was forty-seven, and that he still lived with his mother. They had emigrated from the Azores when he was nine. His father had already been in the U.S. for two years, working at a glassworks factory near Lechmere, and once reunited, the three of them had settled in the Portuguese community of East Cambridge.

  Vivaldo had arrived knowing no English, but eventually managed to earn a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Suffolk University. Nevertheless, other than getting licensed as a justice of the peace, he never pursued a career outside of the family business. From the time he was seventeen, he and his mother—a widow since the late sixties, when Vivaldo’s father had died of a heart attack—had been running a small corner market near Inman Square.

  I took Joshua’s Peugeot and drove down Broadway. I didn’t know the name of the Barbozas’ store, and I couldn’t remember whether it was on Columbia or Windsor Street. I crisscrossed the vicinity known as Area 4, which was largely an African American neighborhood. I stopped at several bodegas and markets, but the merchants were Brazilian, Indian, Syrian. I searched closer to Cambridge Street, and finally spotted Azores Variety on Columbia.

  “Hello,” a woman said when I walked in. Friendly, energetic. She was in her early seventies, perhaps—almost certainly Barboza’s mother. The family resemblance was uncanny. A thick body, a wide face with a prominent brow and heavy-lidded eyes, downturned at the corners like the mouth, only Vivaldo’s wavy hair was dark while hers was white, and she was quite short, the counter she stood behind too high for her.

  I browsed the aisles, temporizing. The place was dimly lit, rather dismal. I had been expecting Portuguese staples like salted cod, fava beans, and linguica, but there was none of that here, just sundries that could be found in any store, odds and ends, everything dusty, overpriced, the stamps on many of the products past expiration. There wasn’t much of a stock, either, one or two of each item on the sparse shelves, like the one bar of soap or the one package of thumbtacks or the one can of shaving cream. I pulled a gallon of milk from the cooler and set it on the counter.