by Meghan Daum
“M.J. and Dee Dee!” Valdette cried, giving no indication of who was whom.
“Greetings, radical women!” tent dress wearer said.
“I brought deviled eggs,” said the other one.
“More deviled eggs!” I said.
“These are filled with tofu,” said the one holding the Tupperware. “Less cholesterol. Who’s got the booze?”
Sue arrived with Christine and immediately everyone swarmed around Christine as if she were a visitor from a remote Polynesian village, pawing her Brooks Brothers’ overcoat and her Isotoner gloves.
“Gorgeous coat,” one of the members of Estrogen Therapy said to her. “And I love your shoes. And your earrings. And your bag.”
The first order of business at the board meeting was to approve the minutes of the last meeting. Only two people had brought the minutes of the last meeting with them. Valdette slipped a copy to me. It said:
Minutes for Coalition of Women (COW), 10/13/00, place: Brenda’s house
• Brenda raised the issue of setting up a booth at next year’s Steakfest to bring attention to poor conditions for meat packers, especially women
• Sue pointed out that it might be better to focus COW activities on political venues
• Valdette said she fears for future of reproductive rights
• Pat reached out to M.J. about her recent hysterectomy
• Sue raised concern that hysterectomies are performed more often than necessary because of insensitive male doctors
• Brenda thought COW could consider doing something about that
• Pat expressed ongoing frustration with the city council’s ongoing refusal to include coalition on their official list of P.C. boards, she said council’s opinion that there’s too much overlap with the P.C. chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) is shortsighted and patriarchical
• M.J. suggested organizing a softball game between NOW and COW; members agreed to form subcommittee to discuss the idea and vote at a later date
• Gail reached out to Pat about her marital problems
• Sue reached out to Gail about her son’s recent juvenile offense for marijuana possession
• Pat joked to Sue that “lesbians have it figured out”; Sue countered that enablers come in every size, shape, color, and sexual orientation
• Valdette’s pad thai was deemed “killer”
“These only cover the first ten minutes!” the tent dress Estrogen Therapy member said, slapping her knee.
“It’s hard to keep up with you, Dee Dee,” said the apparent keeper of the minutes.
Finally, a positive I.D.—tent dress: Dee Dee, the other one: M.J.
“And hard to take notes when you get as shit-faced as we did!” said Sue. They erupted in laughter.
Brenda shuffled some papers in her lap and lit another cigarette with a leopard print lighter. “Okay,” she said. “All those approving the minutes say ‘Aye.’”
They said, “Aye.” Dee Dee said, “Aye, caramba.”
“And now I’d like to introduce our new board members,” Brenda said. “Christine Robinson and Lucinda Trout.”
Valdette clapped her hands lightly and let out a little “yay.”
“Christine is a case worker at the P.C. Recovery Center for Women,” Brenda continued. “She recently moved here from Des Moines, where she got her master’s in clinical social work and mental health policy. She is a wonderful addition to the P.C. community and we’re just thrilled to have her!”
“Welcome, sister!” Dee Dee said, raising her glass of Fetzer.
“And our other new member is Lucinda Trout,” Brenda said. “Okay. First order of business. Did everyone see the article in the Daily Dispatch about the latest domestic violence figures? Last year the P.C. police answered over twelve hundred domestic disturbance calls. Three hundred women entered the battered women’s shelter.”
“Which begs the question, what happened to the other nine hundred?” Valdette said.
“I’m sure some of those calls were to the same house,” I said, munching on my deviled egg.
The room fell silent. Everyone stared at me. This had been my first contribution to the Coalition of Women.
“Not that that diminishes the importance,” I added. “Not that domestic violence isn’t a serious thing.”
“These statistics don’t even reflect the women who don’t reach out for help,” Brenda said. “Which is most of them.”
“It’s an epidemic,” said Valdette. “It really makes you want to start your own little Utopian colony.”
“I hear ya,” said Sue.
“Oh, let’s do that!” Dee Dee said. “Let’s start our own town!”
“I’d nominate Christine as mayor,” Valdette said. “I’ve never seen someone so phenomenal at reaching out to people.”
“I second the nomination!” Dee Dee said.
They dissolved into a din of chatter and giggles. Brenda brought out a new bottle of wine and refilled everyone’s glass.
“Did you hear that Barb Podicek left her husband?” someone said.
“No!” Sue gasped.
“He always was such a dick head.”
“I heard he slept with his nurse practitioners.”
“I heard he slept with his patients.”
“I heard he fondled Kathy Janssen while he was doing a Pap smear.”
“Does that surprise anyone?” said Sue. “I mean, hello!”
“I can’t understand why any woman would go to a male gynecologist anymore,” said Dee Dee. “Someone should circulate a petition to keep medical schools from letting them enter the field.”
I noticed that Christine wasn’t saying anything. Nor was I, for that matter, though I was trying hard to think of something to say, mostly because this was the first social situation I’d been in for a long time, not counting Sunday afternoons at Susannah’s when Mason and I dropped off Sebastian, and it had been ages since I’d heard the sound of my voice making a loud and trenchant point and everyone else saying “yes, Lucinda is absolutely right.” Not that it had ever been that common an occurrence.
“What do you think, Christine?” Brenda said.
“What do I think about what?” Christine said. She was clutching a tissue that she used to wipe the lipstick off her glass everytime she took a sip.
“About the predominance of male gynecologists.”
“I guess I think,” Christine said softly, “that for me personally I’d rather go to a female doctor but often it’s hard to find them. They’re booked up or something.”
“That’s exactly right!” Valdette screamed. “Because there aren’t enough of them. You’ve hit it right on the head.”
“Actually,” I said, “the latest figures on medical school enrollments show that there are actually more women than men attending med schools.”
“But honey,” Dee Dee said, “how many of them actually become doctors? It’s very easy to fall back on statistics. But the fact is that many women are forced to leave the job force because of childcare responsibilities and male chauvinism. I’d like to know how many of those little premed students you’re talking about actually finish their training and become doctors?”
“I have no reason to believe it’s not proportional to the number of men who quit medical school,” I said.
“What about you?” Dee Dee said. “Do you feel that you were pushed into a traditionally female role?”
“No. I’m a journalist.”
“What do you do most of your reporting on?”
“Well, my aim is to move into public television,” I said. She must have been looking at my nails. I’d just had them done in a shimmery opal color called Moon over Miami.
“But what kinds of stories has your boss forced you to do, your no doubt male boss?”
“My boss is a woman,” I said. I’d never in my life wished more that Faye Figaro was in the room. She’d throw a cigarette into the wicker cattail basket and that would be the end of
it.
“They make you report on shoes, on aerobics, on how to throw parties.”
Was she angry that I hadn’t invited her to the barn dance? That I hadn’t asked Estrogen Therapy to perform? I tried frantically to recall my most recent loud and trenchant point, thinking perhaps I could recycle it here. The only one I could think of had to do with Pilates.
“Well,” I said, “that is, unfortunately, how my profession works. You have to pay your dues. I have no doubt that if I wanted to be a doctor that no one would have stood in my way. Many women I went to college with are doctors.”
“And where did you go to college?”
“I went to Smith!” I yelled. Surely that would shut them up.
“Where’s that?” Christine asked.
Oh Jesus, I thought. As if being a folk singer isn’t a traditionally female role.
“Hey, sister, I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” Dee Dee said, leaning over and resting her elbows on her haunches. “I just like philosophical debate. Sorry, I’m a child of the sixties, I can’t help it. Let me just ask you this, do you have a partner?”
“A business partner?”
“She has a boyfriend,” Valdette said, emptying the last dribbles of Fetzer into her glass.
“Okay,” Dee Dee said. “You have a partner. What does he do?”
“He’s, uh, in the agricultural field,” I said. “And an artist.”
“And suppose he was a doctor,” Dee Dee said. I was sure I heard someone snort. “Suppose he’d gone through medical school. And suppose you had, too. Who do you think would have received more encouragement, more approval, more funding, more patient contacts, you or him?”
“I’m having a very hard time making this imaginative leap,” I said. I looked at my empty wineglass. Brenda leaped up for the kitchen.
“Well, it’s not that much of a leap,” Dee Dee said. “The truth is that until recently, medical schools had quotas for women. The men were privileged not only because they could get in but also because, once they were in, they had the benefit of a huge and powerful old boy network.”
I imagined Mason at home right now, hiking around the farm with Sam Shepard, picking branches out of the fields and making a campfire behind the barn. I imagined him blasting Neil Young from the stereo and lighting a joint.
“A legacy of male privilege,” Dee Dee continued. “That’s what we have in this country and that’s what we must fight against. Because until we do, women like you—and it’s your generation I’m concerned about—will be sitting at home like little wifeys, getting paid seventy cents on his dollar, and changing diapers while he puts on a macho suit and goes to the office. Now how fucked up is that?”
It actually sounded like heaven. Except the diaper-changing part. And how could we get the seventy cents on his dollar if we were sitting at home? Her logic was eroding. This was the kind of argument that used to take place in “Intro to Women’s Studies” at Smith and in “American History 101” and “Physics for Poets” and in the locker room of the field house for that matter. I suddenly recalled the slightly guilty relief I’d felt when I began my job at Up Early, where the women freely called each other cunts. Or at least Faye did.
Another bottle of wine had been opened. M.J. had reached over to Dee Dee and begun massaging her shoulder as if she had undergone an assault. She leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, then on the mouth. I saw Christine look away.
“All I’m trying to say, honey,” Dee Dee continued, “is that you should do every thing you can not to let a man keep you down. Their legacy is of patriarchical privilege. Ours is of submission. And we must fight against it every day.”
“Can I just say something?” Christine asked.
Finally, some defense. Christine would cut through this reductive p.c. bullshit and the two of us would band together as the voice of Gen X reason. Perhaps we could then get together for drinks at a later date and make fun of everyone.
“I think,” Christine continued, “that there are some Web sites that direct women to sources of funding for higher education. Personally, I had a small scholarship from Catholic Social Services.”
Funny, I would have thought the Miss America Foundation. The United Vanessa Williams College Fund. Hee hee hee, I tittered to myself, refilling my wineglass. If I’d been with Daphne or Elena or even Mason I would have said that out loud. If I’d said that to Faye she would have said “That’s racist—yet brilliant in terms of the social construct.”
Instead I said, “That’s interesting.”
“That’s a fabulous point, Christine,” Sue said.
Despite the lack of real points made, despite the fact that Brenda’s five-CD changer contained at least three Kenny G albums and M.J.’s tofu deviled eggs had more mayonnaise than tofu, I actually enjoyed myself at the Coalition of Women meeting. I’d always enjoyed arguing and since arguing with Mason wasn’t really possible, as his favorite retort was “Whatever you say, bootsy, you’re from New York so you must be right,” I spent most of my time at home arguing with myself. Even then I usually lost the argument. I made a mental note to come to the next meeting armed with statistics and some pre-thought-out talking points. Yogurt: what happened? It just went away? I couldn’t believe how my intellectual powers had atrophied.
“Is everyone reading Clip My Wings and I’ll Grow a New Pair?” Brenda said. “We’re going to get around to discussing it one of these days, I hope.”
Apparently, they were a book club, too. No one had told me.
“Oh, it’s fabulous,” Sue said. “I just love Idabelle Sugar.”
“Christine, I’m sure you’ve read Clip My Wings and I’ll Grow a New Pair,” Brenda said. “You’re probably way ahead of us on that one.”
Presumably Brenda thought this because Idabelle Sugar, the prizewinning, grossly overrated author of several memoirs about her impoverished inner-city youth, was black.
“Actually, I haven’t,” Christine said.
You go, girl.
“I’ll lend you my copy,” Sue said.
“Lucinda, as a writer of sorts you’ve probably read Idabelle Sugar,” Brenda said.
“Actually, no,” I said. Solidarity with Christine. I tried to catch her eye.
“I’m reading Harry Potter,” Christine offered.
I gulped down the rest of my wine. Any more and I wouldn’t be able to drive. And what did Brenda mean “a writer of sorts”? I was a legitimate social analyst and thinker. I had once been seated next to Salman Rushdie at a dinner party and he’d laughed (I was pretty sure) at a joke I’d made about Cat Stevens (he’d asked for tea after the meal and I’d said “But not Tea for the Tillerman, eh?”). So what was I doing arguing with a lesbian in a tent dress in a faux medieval castle on Camelot Circle? At least I had lost the six pounds. Plus I was tan.
Mustn’t think those thoughts, I thought while driving around the labyrinth of Pioneer Hill, trying to find Highway 36 so I could get home. Mustn’t think about how deeply I’d screwed up my life. Must resist the urge to take my cell phone out of the glove compartment right now and call Elena to tell her the Vanessa Williams College Fund joke.
I was well aware that my blood alcohol level was most likely above the legal limit. But wasn’t drunkenness, like craziness, not really in effect if you suspected yourself of it?
“And then she said ‘I’m reading Harry Potter,’” I said into the phone two minutes later.
“I’m reading Harry Potter,” Elena said.
My head was spinning. The lights on Highway 36 were a blur. I felt like the evening had somehow pulled out a stitch and I was beginning to unravel, like a ratty sweater everyone makes fun of when you’re not around.
Today’s Word Is Glamoricious
To: Lucinda Trout
From: Faye Figaro
Subject: Are You Isnane?
The day Up Early does a piece on tanning salons is the day we start covrage on foreing policy in the middleeast. First of all they are totally unhealthy an
d b) they are totally trashy. Do you want to get cancre? Next thing you know youll be getting fake nails.
We’re planning a special report on book clubs and want you to reprot on a book cbub in the mid-west. Samantha will call yo abouut it.
Also start hinking of Holiday ideas.
Like the water in the horse troughs, which froze every few hours and had to be broken with a hammer at regular intervals, the house sat like a block of ice on the hardened plain. Though we burned through ten dollars of propane a day, heat escaped through every windowpane, every gap in the shoddy insulation, every crack in the floor. In the time it took to open and close the back door, a gust of wind could dart like a burglar up the stairs and into the bedrooms, where the windows were frosted over and even a glass of water left by the bed would grow shards of ice by morning. Mason and I dragged an electric space heater from room to room, tacking a note by the back door reminding us to unplug it before leaving the house. Save the trips to the gym and tanning and nail salons, I rarely left the house anyway. The electric bill exceeded two hundred dollars a month and when I asked Mason if he might be able to chip in, he suggested we close off the second floor until spring.
“What!” I yelled.
He was preparing dinner. Meat loaf, at my request. I was sitting at the kitchen table finishing off my second glass of wine. Though it was just past five, the outside floodlight had kicked on and the sky, other than the low-slung lights of Prairie City twenty miles to the south, was already black.
“The insulation upstairs is shot,” he said. “Obviously the people who were here before didn’t use the second floor. That’s why there was a bed in the den.”
“Jesus.”
“The house is too big to heat,” he continued. “That’s all there is to it. Unless you want to put in a second furnace.”
“We can’t move every thing downstairs!” I shouted. I pictured my desk and computer crammed into the den, which would leave no room for our bed. And where would the kids sleep? Erin had already announced that her room was too small; toys spilled from her closet and covered every inch of the floor.
