by May Sarton
“Put it in the bank,” Stoneworth says, “put it in the bank.” She has now settled with two large packages on the side of her chair and looks at her watch. “I have to keep an eye out for the bus.”
“I’ll do that,” Martha volunteers. “I’ll just stand and keep a lookout and help you gather things together when I see it.”
Mrs. Stoneworth sighs, “Thanks, dear,” then she murmurs, “Coffee’s gone up again, hamburger is out of this world.” This, I think, is addressed to me for then she turns around so she can see Martha and tells her that she wakes every morning and sees that painting and thinks about roots. “It starts the day right, makes me feel strong. I don’t know why.”
“I hear it,” Martha cries out, “we’d better get going,” and somehow everything is gathered up and off they go.
I have just time to say to Martha, “I’ll have an address for you day after tomorrow, so be sure to call, won’t you?” But there is always the risk nevertheless that she will rush off and have the abortion, and I wonder whether I should call Joe. But I must not believe for a moment that I am in any way necessary or the source of wisdom poor Martha imagines me to be. I’m not God and it is not for me to take decisions out of her hands.
So I sit down again at my desk and rough out another ad, this time for the Smith Quarterly. It would be fun to get some support from my classmates, who have presumably not all read the Globe interview.
That has proved to be more troubling than I cared to admit at the time. I notice that something in me cringes still at being identified with a suspect and beleaguered minority. I do not feel comfortable with it. I have to admit this.
18
Here I am at Angelica’s, basking in the open fire with Patapouf lying at my feet, basking in the charm of this big living room I know so well: over the mantel the Sargent portrait of Angelica’s mother as a glowing young woman, a small Vuillard of an intimate interior where a husband and wife appear to be breakfasting, the easy unselfconscious warmth of it all, emerald green velvet armchair and sofa, English chintz pillows here and there and repeated in the flowery curtains. I sit and dream while Angelica is making our drinks in the pantry. When she comes back I look up at her as she hands me my scotch. I smile with the joy of being here. “It’s heaven. I don’t suppose I have felt this laid-back since I opened the store!”
“It’s heaven to have you come. Just like old times,” she says, taking her Dubonnet over to a chair facing mine, “but, darling Harriet, must you use expressions like ‘laid-back’?”
“I saw you wince. Oh dear, well, I am taking in the language of my present environment. That is inevitable.”
“Was it wise,” she asks, after a short pause while we sip our drinks and settle in to the pleasure of the occasion, “I mean wise to try to educate through a feminist bookstore in such a mixed neighborhood?”
“It wasn’t wise, but it is not they who are being educated. It’s I, Angelica, and being educated is what I need. I learn something new every day. I live in a perpetual state of astonishment.”
Angelica cannot help laughing and I know I sound absurd—innocent abroad, as I am told I am almost every day by someone or other. And so it is natural to tell her about Martha’s dilemma and ask her advice about a possible therapist. “Poor woman,” Angelica says instantly and I realize this is something, an unwanted pregnancy, that she deals with often at the family planning agency. She is on the board. On this subject at least Angelica is far more with it than I am. And after a few seconds’ thought she comes up with a name and writes Dr. Frances Willoughby down on a card with her phone number and I slip it into my purse.
“Thanks. I knew you would be able to help.”
“You don’t sound very sympathetic yourself,” Angelica says.
“Oh dear, how perspicacious you are! Martha has attached herself to me, you see, but I do not really like her. She seems terribly selfish, for one thing.”
“But you gave her wall space for her paintings. That was generous.”
And I tell Angelica about Mrs. Stoneworth, how strange it seems that she fell in love with that painting, and how at first I thought she was a bag lady, and how she hates Gothic novels and reads history. “Maybe I just don’t understand creative people, whereas you always have.” And that is true. The young artists and writers Angelica has helped are innumerable. “For instance, I am really drawn to a stunning young black woman, Nan Blakeley, who gave up her career as a journalist to marry and now has two little girls. She is so warm and alive she lights up the store.” I want to talk about Nan as I don’t, really, about Martha. “I have never had a black friend till now, but Nan is going to invite me to meet her husband and little girls some evening when he gets home early enough. Can’t you see how happy I am these days, Angelica? It is a vita nuova. It nourishes me.”
“You look ten years younger,” Angelica says, smiling. “It’s quite visible that you are happy.”
“I wish I were younger though. I get flattened out at times.”
I am aware that we are picking up the threads of our long friendship one by one, but somewhere there is a knot that has to be untied. How to approach that?
It is Angelica who does it. “The bookshop seems to be a store for lesbian women to patronize? At least so I hear.”
“And where do you hear that?” I am instantly on the defensive.
“Word gets around,” she says tentatively, “and of course that interview in the Globe exposed you and what your chief interest is.”
“What rot! I am not chiefly interested in lesbians or the very little lesbian literature there is, not at all. The store is a feminist bookstore, which means there are a lot of philosophical and sociological books about women, ‘herstory’ as against history, books most women do not even know exist. You’d be amazed, Angelica, at all I have learned by reading them. The subject is inexhaustible.”
“I don’t doubt that for a moment.” There is a silence now. We are each wondering how to tackle the essential thing. “Of course,” Angelica says slowly, feeling for words, and it reminds me of a game where you pile up small sticks until finally one makes the whole structure fall down, “I always presumed that you and Vicky were …” Here she hesitates.
“‘Lovers’ is the word,” I suggest with a smile.
“What I can’t understand is your willingness to exhibit what most people consider a private matter.”
I stand up now and back up to the fire, a move that startles Patapouf and makes her give a short bark. Angelica and I exchange amused glances, and the ice is broken.
“Patapouf senses danger,” she says gently. “Well, go ahead. Enlighten this old-fashioned porcupine.”
“As a lesbian—and believe me, Angelica, it is still hard for me to use the word—I am part of an absurd minority that threatens a lot of ordinary people just in the way the black minority does. The difference is that blacks can’t hide, nor can Orientals, but homosexuals are not visible targets.”
“So why make yourself one? You are already paying a high price for it—those threats.”
“Because I am comparatively safe and because I am not the stereotype. No one can fire me; I am not young. I am—don’t laugh—a ‘lady.’ So can’t you see that I must stand up for the hundreds of women who can’t, who don’t dare because for them the risk is too great?”
“No one can fault your courage, Harriet. I admire you for it. But …”
“You don’t like to have to admit that lesbians are and always will be a part of our society and it’s high time this was accepted.”
“I suppose so.” At this moment Alice comes in to announce that dinner is ready and Angelica says, “Give us a few minutes, Alice, we haven’t quite finished our drinks.”
“Now I’ll tell you something,” Angelica says and it is clear that she has had it in mind and wants me to hear whatever it may be. “Sit down and listen to me.” She leans forward in her chair, her hands clasped on her knee. “Ever since this whole business began with that art
icle and all the talk I have had to listen to ever since, I have found myself examining my own relationships with women since I was a child.”
“Good, and what have you found?”
“A lot of things I had buried. For instance, that I adored the headmistress at Winsor School and used to write her what amounts to love poems when I was about thirteen. I used to wait for her to leave school and sometimes walk a little way with her, as she lived nearby. Holding her hand very occasionally was a tremendous excitement—I can’t find the word—stirred me to the depths.”
“And,” I suggest, “you were not afraid because you were too young to have been brainwashed. And you did not feel guilty, did you?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t. I felt elated and privileged.”
“So you do understand that a woman can be drawn to another woman.”
“In a way, I suppose I do. But I was a child, Harriet. It’s rather different, isn’t it?”
“In a way it is, but what seems to happen as one grows up is an increasing fear of one’s own feelings. If you had felt as you did then when you were in college it might have been more troubling.”
“My dear, it was,” Angelica says. “In my sophomore year at Mount Holyoke a girl called Emily fell in love with me, I suppose, and I was in a state of such ambivalence toward her that I think I must have been cruel. I was terrified because I found I rather liked being kissed, but at the same time it was too disturbing, so I went to the college psychiatrist, who was a man, and he assured me that there was nothing wrong with me, but possibly Emily needed some help. She did not come back for the junior year and I have no idea what has become of her. I have never told anyone this, Harriet. But I’ve been rather upset since that article appeared in the Globe. I guess I am still too disturbed to be quite reasonable.”
“But you are honest. So many women are not and perhaps they are the ones who take it out on lesbians like me because it makes them feel safer.”
“Anyway, I feel better for having told you,” Angelica says, and as Alice hovers in the doorway, she murmurs as she gets up, “The problem is sex, isn’t it?” It is such an obvious conclusion that I can’t help laughing. “Oh I know I’m an old fool. And come to think of it the first time a young man kissed me, I felt just as upset as when Emily did.”
Later on, over a demitasse in the library, we talk about Caroline and decide to go together to the funeral, which is tomorrow.
“Nothing shocked Caroline, did it?” Angelica asks me when we have settled and Patapouf has been given my dessert plate to lick. “How did she learn not to be shocked? I feel like such a dodo because I am shockable, as you see.”
“What a splendid woman you are!” I am happy that we can talk again, that we are friends after all. “As for Caroline, perhaps she was unshockable because she had allowed herself to experience everything without questioning, accepting what she felt. It was so beautiful when it came to dying, wasn’t it? She became as open to death as she had been to love all her life.” I would like to tell Angelica that Caroline had loved a woman, but I refrain. I have had enough of this conversation, I think, and it is time I go home and face entering the dark house alone. “You know what I think, Angelica? Simply that everyone is capable of many kinds of love. It’s all there waiting in each of us for that magic touch that wakes up everything we have in us.”
“Yes, and it is something I have not known—the magic touch. Sometimes I mind. I feel deprived.”
“But you mustn’t,” I say quickly. “You have given to friendship all your life what some people can only give to a lover, to a husband. I love you for it.”
She is embarrassed and laughs her embarrassed laugh. “So I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll meet in front of the Coop and walk over to the chapel together.”
It is a comfort to have Patapouf sitting beside me, her big head staring out the window, as we drive homewards. If there is anyone lurking around she will bark, I tell myself. But when I draw up into the parking place to let her out, the person who is waiting for us is Joe. “Good heavens, Joe, were you waiting for me?”
“Maybe I was. I went out for a walk and ended up here but didn’t see a light upstairs and your car wasn’t here, so I thought I’d hang around, see you safely in. Want me to take Patapouf for a short walk?”
“Dear Joe, I’ll come with you.” It is clear that Joe has something on his mind. He does not talk and I am silent as we wait here and there for Patapouf to perform. Finally I have to ask, “Is anything on your mind, Joe?”
Now he faces me and hesitates before he says, “Harriet, I hate to lay this on you, but I know you are a real friend. Eddie has been diagnosed as having AIDS.”
I am silent, too shocked to utter a word. I look down at the pavement, then reach out and take Joe’s hand and squeeze it hard. “But how could it happen to Eddie? Is he on drugs?” I don’t know what to ask or to say and no doubt am blundering.
“Not that I know of,” Joe says.
We walk on in silence. “Of course maybe they’ll find a cure in time.”
“I doubt that. There is a drug that appears to prevent the pneumonia that in the first years was one of the most common causes of death.”
“That is something anyway.”
“It costs one hundred and eighty dollars a week. We are lucky to have that kind of money. Think of all those who don’t.”
I am quite aware that Joe is holding back on something he may not want to talk about. “Dear Eddie. It’s not fair, Joe. That’s all I can think,” and then, as he is still walking along in silence, his head bent, and we have turned now toward home, “Can Eddie still go to his job? I mean, can he, at least for a while, lead a normal life?”
“We’ll learn that. He is at present very difficult to live with and very angry.”
“Oh.”
“You might as well know, Harriet, that Eddie has always cruised around, picked up men in bars, and when I began to love him, not just want him, I had to accept that.”
“How can one accept that?”
“One accepts what one has to accept. I am ten years older, Harriet. I thought he would outgrow the obsessive desire for conquest. I was betting on the long run … and now,” his voice is hard, “love can’t win after all. There’s no time.”
“He needs you, Joe, and it is going to be dreadfully hard.”
“I know something about that—a third of my patients either have AIDS or their partner has it. I dream about it in my sleep.”
“It’s no fair,” I say again. “It’s no fair.”
“I get the answer from all sides, anger at the heteros who use AIDS as a stick to beat gays with. I handle that every day.”
“Is Eddie’s anger about that?”
“No. His anger is against me because I don’t cruise and am safe, or so he imagines.” Joe gives a bitter laugh. “I’m the cross he bears, the well man whom he has to live with. Christ, what a mess!”
We have reached my door and I ask him to come up but he explains that he has to get home. “By now Eddie is sorry for all he has said to me, I expect, and needs a little TLC.”
“You are good, Joe. He is lucky to have you, and I must say that I have held you and Eddie in my heart as an exemplary couple. You have been a comfort to me. Tell Eddie that.”
“He likes you,” Joe says. “Give me a hug and I’ll be off.”
I feel a great warmth in that solid, unsentimental hug, and I feel honored that Joe has felt he could confide in me. There are, after all, advantages in being an old person. If you can be a rock and not fall apart.
I remind myself that I must not forget to give Martha that psychiatrist’s name, but I don’t dare call now as David presumably is there. Tomorrow morning. I write a note to myself and leave it on the breakfast table where I can’t fail to see it. And also remind myself that I am to be in the store tomorrow morning so Joan can take over for the afternoon of Caroline’s funeral.
But once in bed I can’t sleep. I listen to Patapouf’s snores
and for a while breathe in and out in their rhythm but that does not help. I am simply out of breath. What would Caroline say about Joe and Eddie? Is fidelity essential to a viable relationship? I should have thought so. Without fidelity how can one feel secure? Once in the thirty years I lived with Vicky she went away for a month to Paris, pretending it was a business trip, so our friends were told. I knew that she had fallen in love with a Frenchwoman who ran a bookstore. Oh why do I remember it now? Until now, I have buried all that. It was ten years ago or more. I couldn’t eat and lost twenty pounds in that month. I learned that jealousy is the most destructive emotion there is, because it can’t be sublimated. It is simply a poison. Vicky wrote me almost every day and often wrote “Have no doubts, I’ll always love you.” That was like acid on a wound. I could not even cry.
When she came back I felt like a prisoner, walled in. It took a year for me to unlock myself and begin to have faith that she meant it when she told me it was finished with Claire. A long awful struggle, but she won me back in the end, of course. I worked things out in the garden, which was splendid that autumn. I took refuge in the housekeeping routine. I slept alone. When we finally made our peace and could lie in each other’s arms we both cried with relief, and though the crack in the glass could not be mended, the glass did not break and we drank from it. In any good marriage one or two excursions may take place, but at a very high price, as I learned, and I think Vicky learned. But what if I had had to accept a whole series of brief attachments, one-night stands? What if she had said, “That’s the way I am”? I could not have accepted it. I know I could not.
How does Joe achieve enough detachment to accept? How many gay men have to and do? Their physiological makeup is so different from a woman’s. It is not vive la différence, but hélas la différence. Vicky used to tease me because I had never wanted to be a boy whereas she had even coaxed her mother into letting her wear boys’ sailor suits in the summer. That was long before jeans and must have caused a sensation on Mount Desert. But now with all I have been reading lately I see that she was old-fashioned. Lesbian women today talk about being whole women, not about being imitation men like Radclyffe Hall. It is a different universe we live in now, thank goodness.
