Saturday's Child (60 page)

Happily, the impact of such slights is inconsequential, especially when one is in a state of emergence from a traumatic period, or in a state of flushed new loving, or in a state of awe that intimacy with a lover can be
combined
with the intimacy felt for a woman friend. Or, as I was, in all three states at once.

Love Conquers All(most)

Life is a series of recoveries as much as a series of blows, and the former can be even more challenging than the latter. The calm descending in 1983 was relative and temporary but welcome. I lived partly with Iliana in her apartment at the old Grove Press building, and partly at the
Sisterhood Is Global
offices, where the anthology was moving into last-stage madness. I cut back on work at the magazine during that year, having my hands full with
SIG
, fundraising, and continued travel for organizing, benefits, and any university lectures that would pay. Continuing to shoulder Ken's financial needs paralyzed plans for a place of my own. I didn't even have enough money for the two month's advance rent and security needed to get an apartment.

Iliana was more than content with the situation. A homebody who'd been traveling the world since her exile, she'd yearned to nest somewhere, and now she yearned to nest with me. She wanted us to get a larger apartment and live together, and she returned to the subject repeatedly. From the start, I demurred. I'd lived for almost twenty years with my mother and for more than twenty years with my husband, having three months to myself in between. I was fanatic about needing a place of my own, at least for a while—“turf” for my child and myself. I didn't mean this as a rejection of Iliana, although at times she took it as such. Having unilaterally decided to uproot her life in Vienna and move to New York to be near the object of her love, she couldn't grasp why I didn't share needs she felt so keenly. Eventually this would become an issue between us. My insistence on wanting my own space activated her old anxieties about homelessness and fears of abandonment. Her determination that we live together pushed my buttons and made me feel crowded, possessed, infantilized. The first time I dreamed that
she
turned into my mother, I woke up drenched in sweat. You can bet that my therapist and I spent more than a few hours on the question: were all adults I loved condemned to become Faith—either because they showed those characteristics to start with or because I somehow managed to turn each of them
into
her?

But for a while, at least, love conquered all. We'd had only one period of wild sweetness, during the first months of the relationship the previous spring and summer, before the fateful call came about my mother being in the hospital—and even that period had been clouded by Kenneth's distress
and wrath. Nevertheless, those first trips of Iliana's to New York and the brief second trip I'd taken to Vienna were a full-tilt
swoon
I'd never experienced: the way in which the entire atmosphere is so charged that the most ordinary things you do together—laundry, cooking dinner, brushing your teeth—are eroticized. Eating oysters or peeling a mango or listening to Rachmaninoff's “Trio Elégiaque”—all become acts of foreplay positively
suffused
with pheremonic humidity. This is the zero-gravity phase, where you make love horizontally, vertically, and aslant, on the floor, on the sofa, against the wall, on the kitchen table, in the car, and—after leaving a trail of clothing strewn all the way from the front door to the bedroom—on the bed. In this universe, morning fades into afternoon and evening brightens into dawn as the phone rings on ignored, the mail piles up, and the dog whimpers piteously to be walked—while you consider the possibilities of wringing him out over the sink so as not to have to leave for even five minutes. In this dimension, you are capable of a famishment that has you devouring paté, cornichons, and champagne at seven in the morning, and cocoa and scrambled eggs at nine in the evening, because there's nothing else left in the fridge but that's
okay
they're the
best
scrambled eggs you have
ever
eaten in your
life
.

Iliana's hobby was photography, and she took a lot of pictures—cityscapes, landscapes, people. There's one photograph she shot during this time: of a tousle-haired, ravishingly sexy woman, head thrown back, graceful throat exposed, utterly self-possessed, laughing with absolute abandon. When Iliana showed me the print, I was filled with admiration and envy, and although I didn't want to make her jealous, I couldn't help asking her who it was. Her expression sent me back to the photo, and only then I felt tears rising in shocked recognition. It was me.

But the following year and a half of acute stress would take its toll. These were the months when Iliana was forced into functioning more as friend and caregiver than lover—months of nursing-home visits, doctors' and lawyers' meetings, scenes about and with Kenneth. These were the months she spent waiting—for me to get in from the airport, for me to come back from dinner or a weekend with Blake, for me to deal with a crisis at
SIG
while she lingered in the next office helping with translations, for me to stop in at the magazine, for me to return from the hospital, for me to get home from the anthology office well after midnight, only
to leave again at six in the morning. A proud hedonist who celebrated life's sensual delights, Iliana was highly efficient at her UN work but not a workaholic, political but not a dedicated organizer, a poet but not a driven one—so my pattern of passionately juggling chosen commitments was alien to her sensibility. She adored Blake and never questioned my time with him, and she respected completely the hours spent with and on my mother. But she did come to regard my political responsibilities, and especially the anthology, as being in another category. She was supportive of the project, but came to resent the time devoured by it—and I came to resent her resentment. She began to be jealous of the
SIG
staff, as if she was competing against individual women plus an unbeatable rival whose name was global feminism. I felt as if I was having to defend what was keeping me alive. We quarreled over her possessiveness and my obsessiveness.

It's undeniable that work was, all through those months, my salvation. It fed me, literally and figuratively. There was no serenity in which to do my own writing, but work on the anthology made me feel as if, even though my life was in flux, I was making some meaningful contribution. That addressed the earth-mother syndrome, which, let's face it, is as much (or more) about feeling capable and in control as it is about generosity. During the previous year, I'd been forced to learn how to ask for and accept help. That sometimes felt embarrassing despite my gratitude for it. Now I was eager to redeem my own dignity and hungry for independence. The path to both, for me, led through work.

Furthermore, all psychological niceties aside, the anthology
was
a jealous god. In the stress of the project's final stage, staff members were regularly at war with lovers, partners, and husbands; I wasn't the only one. Even two staff members who were lovers with each
other
broke up, partly because of deadline pressure. We
Sisterhood Is Global
women had reached the point when the only people who understood our shorthand—written, verbal,
and
emotional—were, for the time being, each other.

In December of 1983, we delivered the final manuscript to Doubleday in four supersize shopping bags. Iliana thought it was over—but she was wrong. Working with Loretta Barrett, we continued to exert quality control over every production detail, including the typeface, book design, and jacket design. In January we moved out of the Women's Action Alliance,
putting the
SIG
library and my own books, some already in the office and more now liberated from 109 Third Avenue, into storage. Iliana thought it was over—but she was wrong. I picked up my duties at
Ms
. I also began writing fundraising proposals for the Sisterhood Is Global First International Feminist Strategy Meeting, an idea that had emerged from conversations and correspondence with anthology contributors. There was a frequently expressed need for more coherence in global feminist tactics, a longing for the cross-cultural brainstorming that men in the Club of Rome or Club of Dakar get to do—up to that time an unattainable opportunity for women. Moreover, if I could raise funds for travel and housing of twenty-five representative contributors for a week's brainstorming in New York that November, Doubleday would time a major book launch to honor their presence.

Meanwhile, galleys came and went—and as we proofed them we kept updating statistics to the last minute.
³
On May 15, 1984, we delivered corrected page proofs, the now reduced
SIG
staff having worked on them with me every night at the
Ms
. offices. The proposals for the Strategy Meeting went out to funders. And Iliana decided that enough was enough. We had to have a real holiday, she demanded. No,
not
just like the few evenings at the opera or concerts where I'd doze off from lack of sleep, and
not
just like the three days she'd hauled me off to Florida or the weekend we'd spent in Maine: a
real
vacation, with
no
paperwork smuggled along,
no
phone calls back to Karen. Two, almost three whole weeks. Greece, where I'd never been. Crete, where I'd always wanted to go. Away from everything, including the Women's Movement. The honeymoon we'd never had. That should have been enough to warn me.

The trip
was
lovely, with moments of pure enchantment—at Knossos, at Ephesus, at Delphi (where we both drank from the oracular spring, as poets should), and especially on a side trip to Thera/Santorini, the archaeological site of what became mythified as Atlantis. But en route to Greece,
I'd needed to stop in London, you see—for the International Feminist Book Fair. And although we managed to make that a holiday, with obeisance-paying visits to the tomb of Elizabeth Tudor and the statue of Emmeline Pankhurst, I had meetings with
SIG
contributors at the fair, so the politics sort of, well … took over. On the plane to Athens, Iliana exhaled.
Now
we'd be free of the Women's Movement for a while.

But on landing, we were paged over the plane's intercom. It seems we were being met by Margaritta Papandreou, the Greek contributor to the anthology and at that time the First Lady of Greece. There was the greeting on the tarmac, the VIP lounge, limousines with flags flying, a parliamentary party to receive us, the works. I'd dropped a note to Margaritta weeks earlier, to say that since I was coming to Greece for a holiday, I'd love to see her if she had a spare moment, but understood that she was very busy and might not have time. Since I hadn't heard back, I was flabbergasted at this response. Of course, the stay in Athens and environs was transformed. There was still sightseeing, but there were also meetings with women parliamentarians and with activists in nongovernmental organizations. There was a memorable organizing visit to a mountain village with Margaritta—herself an indefatigable woman who used her position to leverage more women's rights and who had founded and was president of the Women's Union of Greece.
⁴
There was a special invitation to the island of Aegina, the Greek “weekend White House,” where Margaritta and her circle of feminist colleagues frequently caucused. I had a terrific time. Greek hospitality welcomed Iliana into all these activities, and she participated in and enjoyed them. But it was
not
what she had planned for us. When we were on the plane to Crete, she shot me a sulky glance, sat back, and again exhaled. Now,
finally
we
would
be free of the Women's Movement.

In Crete the late afternoon air was fragrant with hibiscus, the Aegean was stippled in turquoise and aqua, the cream-colored sand had the texture of silk. Riding in the taxi from airport to hotel, we heard the sound of shepherd's flutes from the hills. Iliana chuckled in triumph, linking her arm with mine.

At the front desk, a basket of flowers awaited me, with a card: “Welcome to Krete! We come at six to take you to dinner! Much is planned! Your Sisters, the Kretan Women's Movement.”

Poor Iliana went ballistic. It was no good explaining about the feminist grapevine and how Margaritta must have mentioned to her Cretan colleagues we were coming because I
hadn't
since I really truly didn't even
know
them but
surely
we couldn't just rudely
reject…

Beware of having the honeymoon you've never had. If you didn't have it when you should have had it, forget it. By the time we returned to New York, more stuffing had leaked out of our two-and-a-half-year-old relationship, though both of us would have denied it if asked. Iliana was dour about returning to work. I'd loved Greece, but I was eager to get back to my desk at
Ms
. and catch up on funding for the Strategy Meeting. Karen had news of some funding guarantees, but nowhere near enough.

The pressure was on again. It was already July. A venue for the meeting had to be found and booked, airline tickets purchased, a stupendous number of details yet to be resolved. Dare we go ahead and formally
invite
twenty-five women—the majority from the Global South—with no guarantee? They had tight schedules and couldn't keep holding the November weeks open indefinitely. I stepped off the edge and decided to wing it. Audacity can feel
so
satisfying.
⁵

On my first day back at
Ms
., Joanne Edgar leaned over from her neighboring desk to cheer me with news I'd missed while abroad, news of another bold act. Marilyn Waring, still an MP (and New Zealand contributor to
Sisterhood Is Global
) had brought down the government and her own political party in an historic parliamentary vote to keep New Zealand nuclear free. I immediately called to congratulate her.