Dry Your Smile (19 page)

She plucked a dead leaf from the furled morning glory nearest her.

“Aw, Lare, something'll happen. At least it's not as if you don't have a platform for your political ideas—”

“Platform? Christ, Jule, a dip-shit one-hour weekly radio show on the local public radio station—at one a.m., yet. That's a platform? So I get to ramble on about what I see happening to this country. For a few minutes here and there. Between playing jazz records like a goddamned disc jockey. All for the munificent sum of seventy-five bucks per show. A platform. Jesus.”

“You have a big following, listeners who—”

“—are insomniacs or like jazz. You should see the mail
I
get, down at the station. Though there's precious little of it. Mostly they want me to play more records and shut up about politics. Especially shut up about feminism and how men have to change blah blah blah.”

“It's not your fault, dammit, that you're one of the few—maybe the only—man alive with such dedication to the women's movement. And that you risk talking about that. It's not your fault that this society is filled with sexist shitheads.”

“You get published by those sexist shitheads, I notice. And invited to lecture at their colleges. And sought out for guest shots on their talk shows. And
their
talk shows reach millions of people—so
you
reach millions of people.”

“Larry, I—”

“And I'm glad. You know that, Jule. Truly glad. I'm proud of you. It's just that …” He trailed off.

“It's just this bloody moment in bloody history, that's what. It's backlash. It's that something crawled out from under a rock and has been crouched in the White House for almost a year calling itself Reagan. It's that the only reason they publish me or invite me to talk is because women want to read and hear a woman speak on women's lives. Women
don't
want—understandably—to hear any more men on that particular subject. Unfortunately, men don't want to hear about the subject at all, especially not from a turncoat male. It makes me want to throw up.”

He found himself appreciating her anger as a convincing performance.

“Funny thing, Jule,” he said slowly, “at certain levels it doesn't really bother me. Sometimes I think that's 'cause I just shut it out—the bothering, I mean. But mostly I think it's because
I
know who I am, what I have to say, what impact I could make. If only they'd let me have some forum from which to make it. I'm not just another Abbie Hoffman or Jerry Rubin. Or even Tom Hayden.”

“At least Tom hooked
him
self up with an actress wife who's successful enough to
buy
him a political forum. Poor Larry, you got a dud from Central Casting.” Her joke went sour and she tried to rectify it. “You'll be remembered long after those Sixties Samurais—”

“I'd rather not be remembered admiringly as a footnote to history. I'd rather not wait for my posthumous vogue.”

“Long before that, darling. Genius, like murder, will out. Oh, Larry, Larry, what
are
we going to do about us,” she tried to laugh. “For me you'll always be as you were the first moment I saw you, at that godforsaken party given by Kent whatshisname—”

“—Campbell—”

“—Campbell, that's it. The one with the small publishing house who got so broke he was even thinking of publishing widdle pink me in a vanity edition Hope would have paid for—to my embarrassment. But he did do one good thing in his life: introduce us.” She began to build her reminiscence. “How else would your universe and mine have crossed? Me, fidgeting with insecurity among real radicals, intellectuals, poets—those dirty old
and
dirty young men who kept sidling up to me drooling things like ‘My dear, you needn't
write
poems; you
are
a poem.' And then—you. I'll never forget it so long as I live. Them in dowdy suits and atrocity ties, and you in khakhis and a plain white T-shirt, your body slender as a Greek ephebe, leaning against the old upright piano with your pipe in one hand and a drink in the other, talking revolution.” He couldn't stop her, and he knew she couldn't stop herself. In the absence of a present, she was trying to seduce him toward the future via the past. “The sight of you standing there: cobalt-blue eyes, just the right kind of Leslie Howard lock of red hair falling over your forehead. The way you peered at me through narrowed eyes and swirls of pipe smoke when we were introduced.”

“‘Laurence Millman, the Red Menace,' no doubt.”

“No doubt. Well, what undereducated hardworking adolescent-of-the-world who was secretly devouring Rosa Luxemburg wouldn't have gone all weak at the kneesies? I remember you had just come from a year in Alabama, working in one of the earliest voter-registration drives. Way before they became chic for Northern white liberals. You talked about it. How the adrenaline was continually in your bloodstream and metallic in your mouth at every telephone ring, every knock on the door. The—what did you call it? The commonplace daily shapes of hatred.' To me, you were everything brilliant and brave. All that stuff could certainly turn a girl's head, you know.”

“Certainly hadn't turned many girls' heads before,” he smiled, admiring the effectiveness of her entertainment despite himself.

“Well, it gave me a permanent crick in the neck. Though god knows what you saw in
me
, through all that pinkiness.” She was fishing.

“Oh, I saw under that. Pain behind the eyes. A lot of energy. A shocking brain that knew more than you thought you knew and said more than you thought you dared. You weren't just some upper-class princess. You kept … surprising yourself. And me. It was fun to watch. I dunno, that air of … possibility. A kind of I-can-do-it-whatever-it-is stubbornness. It fascinated me. And then you hit me like a ton of bricks—”

“With my lust for revolution,” she whispered lasciviously.

“Yeah, that's right,” he chuckled, “with your lust for revolution. I'd never met anybody who wanted to save the world so much, except me. Certainly I never met such an unlikely candidate as you. I guess the temptation to play Svengali was overpowering.”

This time they both laughed. She leaned one elbow onto his tatami mat.

“I sure was ready and eager to play Trilby.”

But the present did exist. And the future? He stared at the silhouette of the avocado tree.

“So who'd have thought we'd wind up playing—what did that one leftist rag of a paper call us?—‘the Ball-less Wonder and the Castrating Bitch.'”

“Oh Larry, don't think about that now. Forget them. What in hell does anybody know about anybody else, much less about any marriage? All the fine-tuned pain inflicted and exchanged in any intimate relationship—”

“You know what they'll say, don't you? If we ever do break up, I mean. They'll say—”

“I know. I can list the cliché diagnoses. Who cares—”

“It Was Competition Over Their Careers.”

“Bullshit. They should know how hard you've fought for my work, how hard I've fought for yours. They should—”

“Also: That's What Travis Gets for Having Married a Person with Oh Horrors a Penis. That would be from your movement separatist groupies, of course.”

“Larry, cut it out. That's not fair—”

“And we can always count on the good old patriarchy itself: That's What Befalls a Liberated Couple When He Does the Dishes and She's Out ‘In The World.'”

“Why are we listing these idiocies?” she persisted. “You and I both know they'll use any rift between us to bolster all the sexist, ageist, classist,
ism
-ist, bigotries they can muster. Gnatbrains. Since when has that stopped us?”

It was too dark for her to see his reaction. But he did answer, the rewarding content of his words belied by the tone of defeat in his voice.

“Helluva good reason to stay together, huh? I mean, not to give 'em the chance?”

“Sure beats explaining things.”

They sat in silence, watching a few stars trying to glimmer against the streetlit sky. Then she tried again, in a different key.

“Larry? I just want you to know … you're
not
last on some mythical priority list. It's just … Oh, I don't know. There's always so much to get
done
. And when I do ask, you sometimes act like it's an insult. As if I were probing for you to name the latest Millman Failures or something. You should know by now I don't ever even
think
of it that way.”

He groped in the night and found her hand.

“I know, Jule. See, but … the thing is, you
are
the one with the exciting news. Late-night meetings, urgent telephoning, trips, the thrill of political—”

“Sometimes it just feels like melodrama, Lare. You know that. Sometimes I think it's all serial explosions triggered by a long fuse set ages ago by
her.
”

“Yeah, but … I mean, it was different when we could work together. Like in the anti-war movement. We were so exhilarated together, even scared shitless as we were all the time. Friends going to prison—I mean for longer than our piddly civil-disobedience jailings—or going underground or into exile to escape the Vietnam draft. But we had our own private …
solidarity
, just the two of us. You and me together. Getting teargassed, beat up, busted, recorded in FBI files, the works. And right through it we seemed to just—
love
each other so goddammed much. Was that only because we assumed we'd die any minute from some crazy shooting us during a demo?”

“Of
course
not. But you were the one who taught me that history moves, new contradictions surface, organizing isn't one long glamorous siege of the Winter Palace—”

“Shit, I know those days are over. I know women had to get their own movement together. I know the Left, Old
and
New, fell apart in this country mostly because of the way it treated women. I know it
deserved
to fail apart. I
know
all that. I
left
the Left, because of
that
. Hell, I gave up a lot to—What I'm trying to say is there's no way for me to follow you where you are now, more than I'm already trying to. I can't even call myself a feminist man because that would be a rip-off, co-opting one of the few things women
name
them
selves
. I can just … play a supportive role from the sidelines. Any other involvement is instantly suspect as ‘taking over.'”

“Because for a man it usually is, Larry,” she said as gently as she could.

“I know
that
, too. But you—you've still
got
it, you've got it with other women. The shared anger, the actions, the in-jokes, the … shorthand code. A feeling of being effective, of having a
community
. I hardly even have any friends anymore.”

A short sigh of impatience escaped her.

“Larry, that's ridiculous. Just last week Ruby and Len—”

“Look. You know as well as I do that all the interesting people these days are women. And they're
your
friends first, natch, and my friends only because I'm the appendage. And the couples—yuck. I'm so tired of comparing ‘struggle struggle toil and trouble' stories as social conversation I could die. But the men who
don't
live with women—or, correction, with feminist women—they're the Job's counselors I despise most of all. ‘Give it to 'er, Lare! Show her you're a man. Put her in her place. All this feminist crap is divisive of Serious Politics.' I need advice like this? So. No friends. Any that might once have been mine have deserted the sinking feminist prince.” He was embarrassed by the way facts kept sounding like self-pity.

“Well then, let's find us some new—”

“Jule. That's not the point. All I'm trying to get at is that your life is the one with the energy, at least the visible kind. Maybe if I were a writer or an artist … but I'm not. You've got that going for you, too. Your life is more interesting to both of us, I'm afraid—even to me. For one thing, it seems our survival—our literal financial survival—depends on it. For another, I
am
proud of you, and I really do believe in this politics, you know. I always wanted to be on the cutting edge. I just never thought I'd be there living vicariously, like—” He stopped himself at the border of the unspeakable.

“Like a stage mother, you mean,” she said, bitterness leaking into her voice. “So I've turned you into a stage mother?”

“Well, you say you dream often enough that I turn into her.”

“
You
once said that if you
were
turning into her it was perhaps a generous sacrifice to save me from knowing how much I was turning into her myself.”

“Well, it doesn't matter, anyway, now, does it.” It wasn't a question. “You must be exhausted, Jule-ums,” he finished off, too lightly. “Tomorrow I'll start ‘striking' the roof, I guess. Before the first frost. Or what New York calls a frost. Nothing like what I remember from the Colorado mountain autumns—
that
was a
frost.
”

For a moment, he glimpsed himself again—a lonely boy, an almost suicidally sensitive young man escaping the winters when he had huddled in bed with a flashlight, devouring books in secret so his father wouldn't blow up over the light bill. A strange longing lay in him for that old captivity, now recalled as a time of freedom. The rough beauty of the Rockies, pewter streams that ribboned through stands of pine and spruce a denser green than anywhere in the world. His connection with and love of the land, a connection Julian had never known, always envied.

“Yes, I guess we should go in … Larry?”

“Yeah?”

“We'll make it yet. Neither of us gives up easily. If we had, we wouldn't have got this far. We're survivors.”