An Independent Woman

by Howard Fast

  “Barbara, you’re angry with me.”

  “Oh no, no. How could I be angry with you?”

  “Yes, I was going to say that every human being is important. I believe that.”

  She went to him and kissed him. “Why do you put up with me?”

  “Very simple. You put up with me.”

  “I’m going to call Eloise now. Can you get the bags upstairs by yourself?”

  “Absolutely. No problem at all.”

  He took the bags up to the second floor, and Barbara called Eloise, who exploded with delight and excitement. “Barbara, you’re back! I’m so delighted. You don’t know how I’ve missed you—and we missed your birthday, but all your presents are piled up here, and it’s only a few days to Thanksgiving, and so we will celebrate then—and so much has happened in the few weeks you were gone. I won’t try to go into it over the phone, but you must drive down tomorrow.”

  “Eloise, darling, that’s impossible. We’ve just walked through the door. There’s a mountain of mail, parcels and letters and newspapers and all the junk mail, and somehow I must go through it and try to answer some of it. Philip has the church, and he must get to his office and try to catch up. But I promise you, we will be there at least a day before Thanksgiving, so we’ll have time to talk and tell you everything.”

  “And how is the wonderful Philip? Was he badly burned? We couldn’t find out through the newspaper accounts, and your postcards were brief to a point of utter frustration.”

  “Oh, Philip is fine. He has practically no hair, but there is a nice fuzz coming in, and the blisters are healed. Bald men are interesting, don’t you think?”

  “Barbara, how can you joke about something like that?”

  “My dear Eloise, without a sense of humor, no one could survive being married to Philip. No, he’s upstairs and can’t hear me. We’ll speak again soon. I trust the family is well?”

  “We’re all good. Bless you for coming home alive.”

  Philip came down the stairs, and Barbara told him that Eloise had blessed her for coming home alive. “A sort of paradox—how else did she expect us to come home?”

  “She’s a dear soul. I started to unpack, but I don’t know where things go—I mean your things—and what should be washed. If you’ll direct me, I’ll finish.”

  “Philip, for heaven’s sake, go to your office. I’ll unpack. I have the whole day ahead of me, and tomorrow and the next day. Don’t worry. Just go off to the church, and I’ll know where to find you.”

  He embraced her, kissed her, and left; and Barbara slumped into a chair and wept.

  What is wrong with me? she asked herself. Why on God’s earth am I so unhappy? My first husband was the ultimate macho who spent most of his life as a soldier and who died in some bleak desert spot in Israel, and I am a pacifist who has fought against war all her life, and I could love him so much—but would I have loved him if he had lived? Why couldn’t I live with Carson? Why did I have to divorce him? Why do I love men so, and find it so difficult to live with them? Why in hell am I so confused? I married the best man I have ever known—why can’t I be happy with him?

  It lasted only a few minutes, and then she shook her head, wiped away the tears, and told herself that she would love Philip, that she would learn to love him and be kind and thoughtful to him and never allow him to know what she felt at this moment. Only this moment. It comes and it goes. We had good days in England and Israel, and now I have work to do. I’m seventy years old, and I can still wear the dresses I bought twenty-five years ago, and Teddy Kollek told Philip that he thought I was beautiful, and even if he says that to half the women he meets, it’s not bad at seventy. I have been on the side of decent people all my life, and I think I can say as Blake said, “I will not cease from mental fight, /Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, /Till we have built Jerusalem”—no, not the Jerusalem I saw— but a place where Philip’s belief in the importance of every human being is real—oh, for heaven’s sake, Barbara, you are an absolute manic-depressive case history, and a moment ago you were in tears, and your only, hope is the fact that they say that if you know you are crazy, you’re not crazy at all—the catch-22 that Heller wrote about so beautifully.

  And then, in her study, she saw her unfinished manuscript lying neatly in a wooden box on her desk. It was irresistible, and, filled with remorse, like a mother who has abandoned and put her child out of her mind, she greedily read the last two pages. There she was in North Africa, talking to Italian prisoners of war; and now something one of them had said flashed into her mind. She put paper into the typewriter and began to write, and ran onto a second page; and she was lost to Green Street and the telephone messages and the unpacking—when the telephone rang.

  It was Birdie MacGelsie, calling to welcome her home and tell her she was scheduled to speak before the Women’s Democratic Committee the week before Christmas, and wasn’t Philip wonderful?

  “Absolutely wonderful, yes.” The spell of North Africa and the Italian prisoners was broken. Almost sadly, Barbara covered her typewriter.

  Then Barbara ran the tape on her answering machine, made notes on the twenty-three calls the tape held before it gave out, and went upstairs to unpack.

  THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING Eloise walked with Barbara to the rear of the bottling plant at Highgate. There in an enclosure with a shed at one end were two large white turkeys and six small ones. “The large hen,” she explained, “is Murtle. The enormous cock—and well named—is Turtle. The kids know the names of the small ones. I can’t tell one from another.”

  “Do you mean,” Barbara asked, unable to keep a note of horror out of her voice, “that we’re going to eat that beautiful bird tomorrow? Eloise, I don’t believe it.”

  “Of course not. Do you think I’m a barbarian? I brought you here because this has become a moral question at Highgate. Adam bought the breeding pair about a year ago. He decided that we might just as well raise our own turkeys. The six small ones are their children. Do you remember Adam, when I first met him at your mother’s gallery? He was the sweetest, gentlest young man I had ever met. But when Sally and I said that we couldn’t dream of killing and cooking that beautiful, stupid bird, he really lost his temper. He almost never loses his temper. After forty years of marriage, he’s turned into an irascible, bearded creature out of the Old Testament. He considers himself a farmer. Can you imagine, with this enormous institution that Highgate has become, he considers himself a farmer!”

  Barbara, watching the birds with fascination, smiled and said, “Did you know, Ellie, that Benjamin Franklin suggested making the turkey the national bird of America? He argued that the woods abounded with them, that they made good eating, and that they were altogether noble. The bald eagle, on the other hand, was a killer of small creatures and very bad eating.”

  “I think he had a point,” Eloise agreed.

  “And how did you resolve it?”

  “Well, when May Ling and Freddie joined in and said they wouldn’t touch a bite of Turtle, and May Ling is pregnant, and Adam is so pleased about having another kid on the place—well, Adam relented and became human again.”

  “So it’s no turkey for Thanksgiving?”

  “Of course not. I went down to Napa and bought one of those frozen twenty-pound monsters that are all breast. It’s been defrosting for a week, and it will be perfect for tomorrow night.”

  Barbara stared at Eloise. “Hold on, Ellie. Don’t you think there’s something wrong in your reasoning?”

  “Not at all. What would Thanksgiving be without a turkey? It’s the best of all holidays, and Clair, who never knew where the next meal was coming from when she was a kid, used to say that it was a perfectly Christian thing to do to worship food for one day a year, and can you imagine how disappointed everyone would be if we didn’t have a turkey?” And then, after a moment, Eloise added, “You’re always so reasonable, Barbara, but nothing in this world makes real sense. Adam lost his brother in World War Two, and then wh
en that madness in Vietnam destroyed our son Joshua, Adam and I could have gone out of our minds. But we didn’t. We worked it through, and we still had Freddie—and I must tell you about Freddie. Are you cold?”

  “No, not at all.” Both women were wearing heavy sweaters, Eloise a tightly knit red sweater with a hood, and Barbara a hand-knit Irish sweater. “But it does get cold here in the afternoon.”

  . “Let’s walk up the hill to our old place. We’ll have a good talk, and we can have a fire. I have matches with me, and there’s always plenty of wood there.”

  “You really want to build a fire, Ellie? We haven’t had one up there in years.”

  “Just a small one. Philip is somewhere with Adam, giving him a history of Israel, I’m sure. Adam is becoming very Jewish, patriarch-style. I argue with him that his mother was Presbyterian, so by Jewish law, he’s not Jewish at all.”

  “Why not let him be Jewish if he wants to?”

  “I’m almost hesitant to tell you, but I’m going to church this Christmas. Chalk it up to age. I want Adam to come with me.”

  “That’s the least he could do,” Barbara said.

  “Do you ever go to church, Barbara?”

  “Well, I do go to hear Philip preach. That’s where I met him, you know. But real church, Grace Cathedral—no, only for funerals. I’m not a church person. You know, Sam’s daughter was never baptized. He’s also decided to be Jewish, same process as Adam. And Mary Lou is pregnant again. She’s younger than May Ling, but not much. They do wait to the last minute.”

  “That’s wonderful. I love family, and the more the better. And Sally’s Daniel is going with someone. I haven’t met her yet, but—well, just perk up your ears. She’s Chinese.”

  “Oh no! That’s great.”

  “She’s coming to dinner tomorrow. And Freddie—no, I’m saving that.”

  They didn’t build a fire after all; Barbara was tired by the climb more than it had ever tired her before, and they would have to come down before sunset. Even with Eloise’s guidance, Barbara did not trust herself to come down the hillside in the darkness. They sat together on the bench, leaning against each other for warmth. “Now, about Freddie?” Barbara said.

  “There are two parts to it,” Eloise began, “and it’s incredible that so much has happened since you left. Well, maybe there are three parts to it. Harry has given up lawyering, and he and May Ling, together with Freddie and Adam, have purchased the Hawthorn Winery down the road. May Ling was unhappy in San Francisco, and they’ve given up their apartment there. Harry is converted to wine—totally.”

  “Oh no—no, I don’t believe it.”

  “Then you won’t believe the rest of it. Adam has agreed to have them specialize in Chardonnay. Well, the market for white wine is growing and Adam has to be realistic—although there’s some word out of France that red wine is life prolonging—nothing much yet, but Freddie has been corresponding with a French vintner who’s trying to get some scientists to investigate it statistically.”

  “Harry and May Ling here in the Valley—”

  “And the little boy is happy—now that he has his own Highgate.”

  “Do they have a house on the place?”

  “A lovely house,” Eloise said. “We’ll drop over there tomorrow, if we can find time. But let me get on to the second part of the Freddie story. He’s become part of the faculty at Berkeley. They invited him to give a weekly seminar on winemaking during the next semester. He’s as excited as a kid about it. Tuesday nights. He’s going to drive in every Tuesday next year, and the first person to sign up for the course was Harry. I think his relationship with Harry is remarkable, considering that Freddie was once married to May Ling.”

  “Freddie is civilized,” Barbara agreed. “He’s been around the course and he’s paid his dues. He put his life on the line when he went down South for the registration drive, and he almost lost it. I love Freddie.”

  “And he’s kept Highgate going. Adam is no businessman. He grows grapes and makes wine, but if it weren’t for Freddie this place would collapse. And I’m glad that he teamed up with Harry. Harry’s very smart. But let me tell you the rest of it. You won’t believe it—but just listen. Judith is pregnant.”

  “I knew that. But I thought she had lost the baby in the accident.”

  “Yes, which is exactly what Judith and Freddie thought, and if you can believe it, neither of them spoke to the doctor about it, and they just went mooning along like a couple of idiot children, and she missed her second period. Then, finally, she had herself examined, and there she was, healthy and pregnant and into the second trimester, and she told her mother about it, and her mother told her father, and the wedding is to take place next week in a Baptist church in Oakland. I would have written to you, but I didn’t know when you were leaving Israel, and this was not something I could tell you over the phone. Would you have believed it, Barbara—you and May Ling and now Freddie and Judith.”

  “How did her father react?” Barbara wondered aloud.

  “From all I hear, he was in a royal rage but then quieted down and finally took it with good grace. Judith was terrified. Freddie is happy as a clam. He’s babbling about building a house on that stone outcropping on the hillside. So if it goes through, we’ll have another child here. Anyway, Judith will be here tomorrow with her father and mother, so I’ll have two of the girls in the kitchen to help Cathrena. I don’t know how I’m going to survive it, but I will. And there I’ve been talking all afternoon, and I haven’t even asked you about Philip and your trip.”

  What should she say? Barbara asked herself. That she had married a good man who was driving her up the wall? Or that she hadn’t the vaguest notion who she, Barbara Lavette Carter, was; or that she was content and unhappy, selfish and unselfish, bewildered and unable to live with Philip or to live without him? Would Eloise understand—or would Eloise listen in total confusion? One thing she had come to realize—she could never leave Philip. She accepted that. Philip should have married someone like Eloise, but he had fallen in love with Barbara and married her.

  “Philip …,” Barbara said, and then she hesitated and paused for a long moment. “Philip is a dear, saintly man—it’s not a bit easy for an old warhorse like me to be married to a saintly man, but I’m working it out.”

  FOR PHILIP THE PROBLEM WAS even more inscrutable. He was a sensitive man, and he had been quite sincere when he said to Barbara that she was one of the most religious persons he had ever known; but a religion without faith, without any belief other than a compassion for human beings, or for that matter for all living things—he had watched her delight in the three dogs that had the range of Highgate—such was beyond his understanding. Being Philip, he looked at his own faith, examined it as he never had before, and refused in any way to blame Barbara. He was deeply moved when he learned that in his absence, when news of his experience at the bus appeared in the press, his congregation had prayed for his recovery, not yet knowing the seriousness of his burns, and had lit candles. There was nothing in the doctrine of Unitarianism—if indeed it could be named a doctrine—that called for faith or a belief in the mystery of man’s being. His own faith was deep inside him, so deep that he had never actually questioned it.

  Having lived for so long without family of any kind, without even his wife, Agatha, he had taken to Barbara’s extended and marvelously mixed family with delight. It was like the consummation of impossible dreams, and he adored Barbara and even bore the guilt of realizing that this was a new kind of love, in his mind almost pagan in the sexual passion he felt for her and in his willingness to learn newly how to make love to a woman.

  He had always felt that the sermon he delivered Christmas Eve was the most important sermon of the year—a feeling he kept to himself. He would make notes and begin to lay it out starting around Thanksgiving Day. He had none of Barbara’s facility in writing. When he read her Notes of a War Correspondent and was informed that she had written much of it on an old portable type
writer at the place where the things she wrote of were happening, he had reacted with awe. Himself, he struggled with each word—started and threw everything away, and started again and again. Finally he realized that he could not write about his own experience in Israel without first understanding Barbara’s experience.

  Lying in bed that night, propped up on one elbow and watching Barbara as she brushed her hair, Philip said to her, “Barbara, if ever you should tire of me and no longer wish to live with me, I shall expect you to tell me so. No fuss and no bother.”

  “Now, what on earth brought that on?”

  Philip shook his head. “I simply wanted you to know.”

  “Suppose I didn’t want to know?”

  “Yes, I should have thought of that.”

  She crawled into bed and put her arms around him. “I suppose it’s your hair. You were very vain about your hair, Philip dear, but I’m quite used to this. Kiss me. I don’t think that when a man and a woman make love, they should talk about it, even old folks like us. I do love you very much, but if you ever again apologize for loving me—well, you’ve seen me angry.”

  “Yes, I have,” he admitted.

  “Now make love to me. No more talking. No more apologies.”

  They made love, and after that, content and fulfilled, Barbara fell asleep. Philip remained awake, and asleep she moved close to him, throwing an arm around him. He dared not move for fear of waking her, and in time he slept, their bodies intertwined.

  IN THE MORNING AT BREAKFAST, Freddie warned them to eat lightly. “I’ve been rereading Ring Lardner’s story ‘Thanksgiving.’ Do you suppose I should read it to the guests before dinner?” he asked his mother.

  “Don’t you dare!” Eloise said. “I hate that story.”

  “Very piggish,” Barbara agreed, and to Philip’s blank look added, “It’s about overeating. Sometimes I like Ring Lardner, sometimes I don’t. I think he’s brilliant, and he wrote with a knife. His brilliance is forgotten today. That’s the fate of so many good writers. But such a savage commentary on Thanksgiving—well, I don’t know.”