by Tricia Dower
Lin takes a swig of wine. She didn’t know there were so many positions.
“Oh boy, listen to this,” Angel says, “It says men can get turned on by something as simple as putting a quarter in a vending machine. That’s a hoot.”
“What kind of vending machine?” Lin asks. That sends Angel and Ginger into paroxysms of laughter as if she was trying to be funny.
Ginger points out a page with a pattern for a G-string, says, “I could make them for us. Silk would be so cool. What do you want, white or black?”
Angel laughs. “I can’t see having the occasion to use one.”
Lin says, “What’s it for?” It looks like a skimpy bikini bottom.
Ginger says, “So he can kiss you there and not get hair in his mouth.”
Lin closes her eyes. “Disgusting.”
“No it’s not. We need to be good at this stuff.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s all we got going for us. Well, it’s all I got. Besides, unless you’re frigid, it’s more fun than just letting him stick his dick in you.”
Lin wonders if Ginger uses vulgar words with the guys she dates, if they like it.
Ginger asks if Angel has any pop music. The answer is no. She hustles off to her place, brings back her 8-track player and speakers. She carries the sleeping Jolie into Angel’s room, puts a tape in and sings along to “I Feel the Earth Move,” her wistful little soprano in counterpoint to Carole King’s earthy voice. Angel joins her on the couch.
Lin stays at the table, opens the book. The man and woman look more determined than joyful. She turns to the section headed Problems and pours more wine in her glass. After Fetish, Fidelity and Fighting, she finds Frigidity. It says a woman is frigid when she doesn’t enjoy sex even after she and “her man” have both “taken trouble” to see that she should. She and Ron never took much trouble, went about it in a shy, orderly way, she keeping to herself most of the time, trying not to scream when it felt like a giant worm burrowing in her earth, trying not to think of Eldon Jukes. There were times she liked it, when she felt more equal, more his partner than someone less powerful. The book says you should ask your husband to play out your fantasies. She pictures Ron’s soulful dark eyes beneath a Che Guevara beret and giggles. Angel and Ginger belt out “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman.” When another song cracks open a sob in Ginger, Angel turns off the music and says, “On your towels, ladies.”
Lin flops woozy and boneless onto hers. Angel says, “Close your eyes and imagine an invisible cord threading us one to another. Picture it passing through a hole in my chest to a hole in Lin’s chest and then a hole in Ginger’s.”
Lin feels as if she’s spinning in circles when she closes her eyes. She flips them open, disoriented and giddy. “Maybe it could pass through our ears and we could hang together like blouses on a clothesline.”
Ginger says, “Gotta get your ears pierced first, Lin.”
“Never. Nobody’s gonna hole-punch my body.” The words come out all slurry.
Angel says, “Lin Brunson, I do believe you’re drunk,” and they laugh until they cry. Angel fetches three pillows and they sprawl out on the floor, a cord passing straight through the holes in their hearts.
48
Wed, April 11/73
A fire-breathing Lois Larsen summoned me to her lair today, so steamed she could hardly spew her words: What do you think you’re doing, you & your mutinous little gang? You know we created a job for you, don’t you? I didn’t. Her fisted hands looked ready to pound the desk. You were the poor minister’s wife who’d had a breakdown & needed help. Not even a Lutheran & this is how you repay us.
Lin enters the big square Marketing room on the seventh floor. Shirley booked it a month ago for a day when no agents would be in training. Since then, Lin has been discreetly inviting the women she informally surveyed to come during lunch break today and discuss how to let management know they want to get ahead. Let’s brown-bag it, she said. A dozen show, excited, chatty, transforming the sterile room with a spirit of celebration, dressing it up with their colorful clothes. They sit at wooden tables facing the blank green chalkboard, their expressions expectant. She experiences an outpouring of love and gratitude: they’ve come because she asked them to. Once upon a time she’d have thanked God for their trust in her. Who does she thank now?
She leans against the instructor’s table in front of the chalkboard—a pose she hopes isn’t presumptuous. Amid the rustle of brown bags and waxed paper, she repeats VP Gunderson’s assurance of all jobs open to all women, hands out copies of the training and development section of the binder she spent three freezer dollars to photocopy and asks if anyone is interested in underwriting or data processing. A few women snicker. She says, “I’m serious. I’ve done my research. Those jobs appear to pay women the same as they do men. I’ve made a list of them and their responsibilities.” She distributes copies then reads aloud a draft of a letter Shirley has typed.
“Dear Mr. Baardsson.” She glances up. “That’s our president, in case anyone doesn’t know.” A few women laugh. “As dedicated employees,” she continues, “we the undersigned have earnest aspirations to build a career with progressively challenging positions at Lutheran Protection.” She pauses again. “I thought dedicated and earnest would convey both ambition and loyalty.” She reads on. “Most of us have degrees with which we could better serve the company. Many of us have financial needs that outstrip our current salaries.”
Donna Forsberg from Health Insurance says, “I don’t like the financial needs bit. I don’t want to come across as just wanting more money.”
Margie Drescher from the typing pool says, “I don’t mind coming across that way.”
Donna says, “But it’s redundant. Progressively challenging positions implies better pay.”
“Not necessarily,” Margie says. “Did you catch the first Mary Tyler Moore show? Lou makes her an associate producer then says she can be a full producer for fifteen dollars less a week. She says she can’t afford to be more than an associate.”
Donna laughs. “Okay,” she says. “Keep it in.”
Aggie Kirkham from Accounting says, “No. I vote for it coming out. It makes us seem stupid for staying in stingy jobs. And it could look like a threat.” She holds up her sandwich. “Pay me more or this explodes in twelve minutes.”
More laughter.
Lin says, “Okay, let’s strike the financial needs line, it mentions higher pay later.” She resumes reading, “Our requests are few. Understanding it’s difficult for Personnel and busy managers to be aware of every possible candidate for an open position, we ask the company to post all job vacancies and their requirements. That will enable interested, qualified people to come forward and those of us not yet qualified to determine what skills or education we lack.”
Pat Wolfgang from Advertising says, “Oh, I like not yet.”
“We also ask the company to make an effort to identify and support women who want to move into more challenging and higher paying positions.” She looks at Donna and Aggie. “You okay with that wording: higher paying positions?” They nod. She continues. “Not because women are more deserving than men of support but because they are underrepresented in the company’s professional and management level positions. We would appreciate specific support in discovering our aptitude for those positions.”
Shirley types a fresh copy of the letter on the portable typewriter she brought from home, not wanting to be accused of using company equipment for nefarious purposes. The women sign it and Lin seals it in an envelope marked Personal and Confidential. Shirley will get the mail girl to deliver it directly to the president’s secretary.
Nine days later, Lin stands in Lois’s office, humiliated to learn she was a charity case but relieved, too, when she figures out what Lois is going on about because it means somebody has read the letter. She asks, “W
hat’s wrong with helping women get better jobs?”
“Not a thing,” Lois says. “Personnel does it every day but never underhandedly.”
For a moment Lin’s a little girl again, has to fight the impulse to crumple. “We weren’t underhanded. We met openly.”
“You should’ve gone to your bosses for help. That’s how we work here. We don’t undermine our managers.”
The managers have done diddlysquat for women, in Lin’s opinion. She stares Lois down, waiting for her to say never darken our door again, but Lois says, “Go back to your desk.”
Lin invited Karin to the meeting but as management she declined. She isn’t surprised about Lois’s reaction, says, “You probably haven’t heard from Mr. Baardsson because that would acknowledge what you did as collective bargaining and open the door to a union. He’s a lawyer, you know. You should read up on labor laws if you’re going to do this sort of thing.”
Ron laughs when Lin tells him the whole story that night on the phone. “My sweet little agitator,” he says, “my own Mother Jones.”
Ordinarily she’d be offended at him calling her his sweet little anything but since infiltrating the single mom ghetto she realizes what an advantage she has over most of them. Losing her job wouldn’t be the tragedy losing theirs would be. She could always go back to him. Being single is no great shakes. Ginger’s Lonely Hearts haven’t panned out. She hasn’t had a date for five weeks. There may be a bunch of fish in the sea but the water is biting cold.
49
In her nearly seven months at LP, she’s gotten only four calls at her desk. The fifth comes a day after Lois’s little lecture.
“I’m on a phone I don’t trust,” a long-lost voice says. “Meet me at Dayton’s tomorrow?”
“What time?”
“You name it.”
“Noon?” Tomorrow is Friday and a payday. She’ll get an extra half-hour for banking.
“Got it. Candy department, twelfth floor.”
“Are you okay?”
“Tomorrow.” The line goes dead.
Fat rain slaps her up and down, left and right, all the way to Dayton’s the next day. Her shoes slosh in the elevator. So many questions, so much feeling crowding in. Ron phoned minutes after Helen hung up. He’d given her Lin’s number, kept her on the line long enough to learn she’d left Carl.
Lin darts out of the elevator, eyes searching for the candy counter. She spots a squat body in a yellow slicker, springy black hair escaping under a goofy fisherman’s hat, and sprints across the floor. Helen’s eyes register surprise and her mouth breaks into that familiar gap-toothed smile. Lin laughs. Helen raises a shushing finger to her lips, crooks it and leads the way to an elevator marked STAFF ONLY. They have it to themselves. She pushes a button then turns and hugs Lin tightly. Her soggy weight is like a wonderful old dream. She hands Lin a little white paper bag and says in that still throaty voice, “Swedish fish. They’re for Tavis but you could afford to eat a few by the looks of you. Are you sick? How’s my little buddy?”
Lin laughs and closes her eyes for a moment at the wonder of it. Helen. Here.
The elevator stops at the fifth floor. She toddles behind Helen, babbling like a child. “I’m fine, really I am. Food just doesn’t appeal to me as much as it did. You should’ve seen me a year ago. I’ve gained a few pounds back. Tavis is almost five, getting smart-alecky. He’s in daycare. Where’d you go? When’d you get back? I’ve missed you so much.”
Helen heads toward a grouping of Mediterranean furniture Ginger would covet. “Walk with me,” she says. “I can’t stand in one spot for long. I’m never truly alone.”
Lin sidles closer to her. “Were you and Carl at that FBI break-in?”
“It’s dangerous for you to know about us.”
“You’ve gotta tell me something. It’s been more than two years.”
Helen moves to another make-believe room, this one with an orange shag rug and lacquered furniture. She points to a couch in a gaudy orange, black and yellow geometric pattern, says, “That’s a beaut. Let’s check it out.” When they’re beside the couch, heads together, pretending to read the tag, Helen whispers, “He’s addicted to risk, can’t stop the macho shit. I’m done with it. I left him out there climbing into boxcars at night, crippling bombs.”
“Out where? The war’s over. The last of the troops left a week ago.”
Helen’s laugh is nearly a sob. “Honey, wake up. This country is still shipping bombs there. I got in touch to warn you the Prairie Fire police chief is an FBI informant. Carl thinks he sent you those traitor letters.”
Lin sits down hard on the couch. “You’re kidding.” Chief Sagen, who assured them the letters were pranks? He must’ve had a good laugh, knowing he’d shaken her.
“I’m not. The FBI infiltrated the Honeywell Project too.”
“Well, no matter. I’m out of the movement. So’s Ron. There’s nothing to inform about.”
“Don’t be so sure. They monitor churches. They’re worse than the KGB, want you to believe they can see into your very soul. I hope Hoover went straight to hell last year.” She sits beside Lin. “What’s with you and Ron?”
Lin fills her in as quickly as she can, feeling pressured by Helen’s secretive manner. She tells her about the FBI agents coming to the parsonage looking for Carl, about the Wrestler on the bus. “I see him other times, too, and wonder about that.”
Helen shakes her head hard, says, “Crap. I bet he’s following you to get to Carl and me.” She looks around, her eyes wide and darting. “Do you see him here?”
The air seems suddenly bright with threat. Lin’s eyes register three women newly off the main elevator, a man in a suit, likely a Dayton’s employee, huddling with a young couple, a woman in a dress striped like an awning, trying out a mattress. “No.”
Helen gives her a quick hug. “Stay here until I’m gone, okay? Not a word to anyone you’ve seen me. Take care of yourself and that precious little guy.” Lin’s agitated mind barely registers Helen’s short legs hurrying toward the staircase, disappearing into the afternoon.
At Prairie Fire that night she tells Ron about the Wrestler, that she thought he was only a pest, at worst a pervert. Now she’s sure he’s FBI, pursuing Helen and Carl.
Ron shakes his head. “He’s not FBI.”
“How do you know?”
“They don’t ride buses.” He grins then, an attempt to make her feel better, she assumes.
He frowns when she tells him about Chief Sagen. “Son of a gun. Who do you trust, huh?”
Just past Apple Valley on the way home the next day, she spots a bald eagle on a nest high in a cottonwood tree. It could be either the male or female. She’s heard they take turns incubating the eggs and hunting after the eaglets are born. The nest has got to be seven feet or more wide and deep. She pulls over and kills the engine, waits till the car stops ticking—it’s nearly eight years old and unreliable—then gets out and squints up. Willard Spate told her most eagles come back to their nests each year, adding twigs, grass and other stuff to it. These two have added a rec room and an extra bedroom. Willard also told her bald eagles mate for life.
She gets in the car, the need to trust Ron again an ache in her gut.
50
Words from Ginger’s book—“sex is play”—linger like a song whorling in Lin’s brain.
She’s never thought of it as play, finds it fraught with momentous consequences, something a woman has to give away to a man, like pieces of herself. But Ginger acts as though it’s no more than a biological reflex. And every other song on the radio is about someone wanting to “get it on.” Lin didn’t realize you had to be clever at it. It seems a little unfair with everything else a woman’s expected to do. Before she got drunk that night at Angel’s, she read a “recipe” for something called spider’s legs. You’re supposed to touch the other person
’s skin so lightly spiders could be dancing on him. She wonders if Ron yearns for more passion than she’s given him, wonders if he ever touches himself. Two weeks after the snowstorm, as ice still flashes in gutters, she imagines her fingertips grazing his skin and feels a rush of desire.
The following Friday, she’s on her back watching tree shadows lunge across the bedroom ceiling. From his breathing she knows he’s still awake. “You used to sleep without your pajama top.” Her voice shakes. She’s not sure she can do this. “Once upon a time you said you’d be content with only my breath on your skin.”
“I remember.”
“I liked feeling your skin next to me,” she says.
He takes off his pajama top, says, “Now what?”
She turns on her left side and places her right hand just low enough so the hairs on his chest rise up to meet it. She turns her fingers into legs and passes them as delicately as she can over his chest, his shoulders, his arms. He shivers, turns and reaches for her.
“Not yet,” she says.
51
The president of Lutheran Protection wants to meet her. His secretary books the appointment through Karin for Thursday, May sixth. “Command performance,” Karin says. “And before you ask, I don’t have a clue what it’s about. I expect a full report.”
The elevator opens onto a gallery-like space on the eighth floor with windows on one side and ten-foot-tall mosaic panels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John on the other. Stepping out, she feels as if she’s crossing a border. At a lone desk at the far end of this hushed expanse sits the president’s secretary, Rosemary Lundt, in a snappy black and white checked dress. Shirley raves about the efficient, gracious and tight-lipped Rosemary. In a convent of secretaries, Rosemary would be Mother Superior. Lin tries to slow her racing heart as she makes her way to Rosemary’s desk. Tiptoeing past the panels she thinks about Aunt Libby’s Last Supper napkin holder, wonders if these apostles’ eyes jiggle, too.
