The Immigrant’s Daughter (43 page)

“Take it or leave it.”

“I'll take it!” she cried. “Bless your heart.” She looked at the clock. “One-thirty. You'll stay overnight?”

“At the Fairmont. I reserved a room there. I'm not rejecting you, old girl —”

“Carson dear, you're wonderful. You're the ultimate of white Protestant respectability, just as I am. Our sinning is no less than anyone else's, but our self-deception is unbelievable. We are old folks. I know more about you than anyone else in the world. I was married to you, I loved you, I hated you, I divorced you, and like a dumbbell you never stopped loving me. We tried sex more times than you could shake a stick at and it hardly ever worked, did it? And I'll bet a fig that somewhere there's a lady that turns you into a horny old goat, but I'm not the lady, and I simply adore you, and I think you've been kinder to me than anyone in the world. Where's your wife?”

“Palm Springs.”

“There you are. What a simple, harmless and dishonest affair we're having!”

“You know,” he admitted, “what you said about self-deception is true. I left word at the hotel that I was not to be disturbed and that I would not take any calls.”

“I have three bedrooms. You can crawl in with the old lady, or you can go it alone in one of the guest rooms.”

“As you say, old dear. How about a nightcap?”

“You remember what happened the last time we did nightcaps?”

“I'll take my chances. We'll do it gently. Just a glass of sherry.”

Barbara poured the sherry, and she and Carson sprawled on the chairs in her living room. “Do you know,” Carson said to her, “it's a sort of relief to put sex aside and just sit and talk to a woman you're deeply fond of. All our lives, we're driven by this man-woman thing and the crazy macho that my sex has created and the wagon circle that you all had to build against it. It creates and destroys, and it's a blessing to reach a point where you can put it aside.”

“But it's a wonderful game when you play it,” Barbara said wistfully.

“Regrets?”

“Yes and no. I love men, no question about that. When Boyd died, I didn't know any way to live without a man. I had to learn, and it hasn't been easy. But I'm all right now.”

“Because you found your way back to the windmills.”

Barbara smiled fondly. “Dear Carson, you understand me, don't you? You know why I must tilt at the windmills.”

“I've always known.” He finished the glass of sherry. “Shall we turn in?”

“Sure.” She took his arm. “Nighttime, this house turns cold as a witch's tit, and there's nothing in the world much better than a man's body next to yours.”

“No question about that.”

They went on up the stairs.

Two days later, Birdie MacGelsie telephoned and said to Barbara, “I'd like to bring some people around to talk to you.”

“About what?” Barbara asked suspiciously.

“The freeze. The freeze on making those damn bombs.”

“Who do you want to bring around?”

“Why are you so suspicious?” Birdie asked.

“Because I'm comfortable. I'm relaxed and I'm comfortable. I'm writing two columns a week for the
L.A. World
and I read books and I have cable, so I can watch a film when I want to, and every week I lunch with Eloise, and I'm normal and happy and content.”

“What nonsense!” Birdie snorted. “You've never been normal and you've never been content. Happy, I don't know about.”

“It may surprise you, but I happen to be quite content. Who do you want to bring around?”

“Just a few people — Father Gibbons, he'd be representing the Peace Fellowship; Terry Distan —”

“Gay rights?” Barbara interrupted.

“Yes.”

“That's already an odd combination. Who else?”

“Your ex-daughter-in-law, Carla; she's become president of the Bay Area Chicano Union. And Abner Berman; he's the local NEA guy. Just the four of them for the moment.”

“I shouldn't listen to you,” Barbara said.

“Please, Barbara. You've never said no to anything like this.”

There was an interval of silence, and then Barbara sighed. “All right.”

“Two o'clock?”

“Make it three. I have a column to finish.”

At three o'clock, she let them into her house and seated them in her living room, Carla, as vibrant as ever, Father Gibbons, a Jesuit priest, a slight man with a ferret face and a pair of black, accusing eyes, Terry Distan, a Montgomery Street type, tailored meticulously from head to foot, three-piece suit and properly clipped beard, and Abner Berman, jovial in tweeds and pipe and knit tie, and of course Birdie MacGelsie, swallowing her smile of triumph, deferring to Father Gibbons, who opened by asking, “Would you like me to make a short, convincing preachment to the effect that unless we rid ourselves of that cursed bomb, the good God will gaze upon a planet devoid of life?”

“No,” Barbara said emphatically. “I am not friendly and I don't like sermons. I know what you're here for. There are other people in San Francisco. Why must you upset my life?”

“Ah, yes,” Berman said gently. “But the plain ugly truth is that no one can do it the way you can. You have a track record that won't go away. You created Mothers for Peace, which was the smartest and most effective peace movement during Vietnam. We watched that. We watched your campaign for Congress —”

“You know our intentions,” Father Gibbon broke in. “We intend to put a million people on Market Street. They'll be doing the same thing in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston — yes, in L.A.”

“And you feel that will move Mr. Reagan?”

“Maybe not,” Disten said. “But if we pull it off, the whole world will see it, and that means the Russians too.”

“I agree with you,” Barbara said. “If we pull it off, the whole world will look at it, and maybe Mr. Reagan too. But let me say this, Terry: if I let myself be talked into this, I don't want to have you telling me that you will deliver a hundred thousand gays if you can carry your own slogans for gay rights. If we march and assemble for the freeze, it is for the freeze, period. And that goes for you, Father — you don't push antiabortion here, and you too, Carla. For once the Chicanos are going to stop shouting about civil rights and talk peace. Either this is a single effort in one direction, or you go elsewhere for somebody to tie it up.”

“I'll buy that,” Distan said.

“And what makes you so sure I'm a right-to-life gent?” Father Gibbon asked. “Things change, Barbara. It's a fluid world we live in.”

“The point is,” Birdie said, “that this is the very beginning. We want to start the organizing pressure from here.”

“What you mean,” Barbara said, “is that you want to turn my home into a madhouse, and have a place rent-free, where you will install twenty telephone lines and stick me with the unpaid bills and store enough leaflets and pamphlets to make the halls impassable, and have every nut in the Bay Area aware that all this commie peace business comes from Barbara Lavette's house on Green Street.”

“Sort of,” Birdie admitted.

“We are not just talk,” Berman insisted. “We will be with you every inch of the way. We understand your position and accept that you're not a young woman.”

“You understand that?” Barbara said acidly.

“I'm sorry.”

“Sorry, indeed! Now listen to me, all of you. If there were anyone around who loved me, he'd talk me out of it. Here, I'm alone against the lot of you. I'll base my response on two questions. First, has a date been chosen?”

“Three weeks from now. So the agony is at least terminal.”

“And second, this: three weeks leaves small time for fund-raising. How much money do we begin with?”

Birdie handed her a slip of paper. “Here's my check for five thousand. MacGelsie howled, but I won.”

Terry Distan handed her a check for two thousand dollars. “It's a beginning,” he said.

“We should have five thousand by Friday,” Berman said.

“I don't know what,” Carla said. “We'll do our best.”

“What I can squeeze out of my lot, I don't know,” Father Gibbon told them. “I have an appointment with the bishop for lunch tomorrow. I'll do my best.”

“I will not touch the money thing,” Barbara said. “We need a treasurer right now.”

“I'm a lawyer,” Distan told them. “I'll be glad to open the bank account and draw up the papers. We'll want two signatures on the checks. Suppose I say myself and Birdie?”

“So I guess I've done it again.” Barbara sighed. “Ah, well, at least it's only three weeks. So let's get down to work.”

That night, Barbara had dinner with Sam and Mary Lou, and she told them about the freeze demonstration plans. Sam said nothing. Mary Lou told Barbara that she had given up her job at the hospital. “But still and all, I don't see myself reading novels and watching the booby box for the next five months. Can I have a job, Barbara?”

“The pay is small — nonexistent, as a matter of fact.”

“I'll be there tomorrow,” Mary Lou agreed.

“Sam,” Barbara said to her son, “don't be intimidated. Just say whatever you want to say.”

“I don't know what I want to say.”

“Ah, well, dear one, just don't see it as anything extraordinary. Some of us have to shout now and then, even if no one hears us.”

“People hear you,” Mary Lou said.

“I like to think so. Otherwise, I'd feel too absurd.”

“You're never absurd.”

“Oh, I have been, rest assured. One spits into the wind, you know. I like to think of such a label or requiem for my kind of person. Nothing pretentious, nothing like all the bad prose the other side lays on their cherished ones. I would leave it right there and call us the
wind-spitters
. It defines all the absurd qualities that we possess. It mocks at our impotence, yet it admits that we do stand up to the wind, that we face it and that we spit directly into it. I am not apologizing for anything tonight, Sammy; I am simply trying to explain your mother.”

But having said that, Barbara was embarrassed. Regardless of chronology, she felt too young for requiems and thought that even to define herself as a
wind-spitter
was somehow pretentious.

The man and the woman sitting at the table with her were smiling affectionately.

“The hell with labels and explanations,” she said. “I am just what I am, Barbara Lavette, and I intend to go on living with it and doing what I've always done. And that goes for the three of us, doesn't it? It's not easy to become the friend of someone you cherish, but we'll try.”

“I'll buy that,” Sam said.

“You wanted to say something before?”

“I think I said it, Mom.”

“Then let's eat,” Mary Lou decided. “I skipped lunch.”

“You're eating for two, dear, and skipping lunch makes no sense. You see, whatever else changes, I'm still your mother, so call the waiter, Sam, and we'll order. That's the crux of it. Even the Best of philosophy never filled an empty stomach.”

“And I'll buy that too,” Sam agreed.

A Biography of Howard Fast

Howard Fast (1914–2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's
The Iron Heel
, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.