Vida (20 page)

She was not romantically interested in Pelican, but she did not like to let a man understand that. She wanted him to feel good, to think at any time they might get together. That kept things pleasant. She hated to hurt people’s feelings, and always she was convinced she could juggle events to satisfy. Therefore, when Pelican came in, she gave him a special long smile, but was careful to keep away from him for the rest of the evening.

The SAW office was in an old SoHo loft, a building occupied by artists and light industry. Above them, a metal press ran all day stamping out forms. They had one long room, with the desks clustered near the windows that gave on the street, the meeting space of random old chairs in a circle toward the middle, where racks of literature on every aspect of the war, radical history, labor struggles, student unions, and bibliographies for study groups lined the walls. The back of the room filled up with junk—old posters, broken furniture, signs from demonstrations, clothes left over from a rummage sale. When almost all of the circle of chairs had filled by ten to eight, she jumped up from the still towering pile of requests on her desk and slipped into the chair next to Lohania, who held up her hands to show off shiny black polish.

“Isn’t it wicked? I’m the Dragon Lady herself,” Lohania said. She was flirting with Bob Rossi, but stopped when his girlfriend Brenda started glowering. Lohania didn’t like Bob Rossi particularly, but she liked to flirt. If the other women criticized her, Lohania told them that they didn’t understand cultural differences, that it was very Latino to flirt. She didn’t say that to Vida. To Vida she said, “Eh, it’s fun. I like to make those guys wag their tails!”

Vida smiled at Lohania, who wasn’t watching. Sometimes she could feel in her friend the child poking through, the skinny dark unloved urchin with all-A grades, trying desperately to get rid of her accent and chewing her nails down to the quick and into the quick, always with a sore or infected finger from all that wanting and rage turned inward. They were bluntly honest with each other, much more open and talkative about sex than she had ever been able to be with her sister Natalie. Lohania needed to prove her attractiveness on men time and again; yet she also needed to give herself over to loving violently, as if she were throwing herself down a flight of stairs. And all of the time she was dead serious politically, the Marxist-Leninist whose room was lined with all those dull-looking books and pamphlets Vida could force herself through only when they were in some study group. The unwanted scabby urchin, the revolutionary scholar who read Marx in German, the compulsive vamp all coexisted in her friend.

The three dominant males on the staff were Oscar Loeb, Bob Rossi and Larkin Tolliver. Oscar was dark, stocky, erudite, intense, the best theoretician. Like Leigh, he came from an Old Left family. His father had been killed in Salerno while he was a toddler; his mother was a Party functionary who worked in a box factory. He had been the first man she had got involved with after settling in with Leigh, but the affair had not survived their being often on different sides politically. Oscar cared more for words and ideas than for people, she judged, and would sacrifice the real gain for the paper victory. Still, she felt close to him. When his best friend had gone to prison for draft refusal three months before, she had from sat up with Oscar, holding him all night as he wept.

Bob Rossi was heavy and big like Daniel, but chestnut-colored in hair and eyes and handlebar moustache. He was a Maoist and craved action. Again Vida sometimes found herself on his side and sometimes not, because she found him prone to be where the action was, whatever it was. Larkin Tolliver was an unknown factor. He came from Kansas with some of the Midwestern SAW mannerisms, the address Brothers and Sisters, the air at times of a Baptist revival preacher and the reputation of burning commitment and a tremendous ability to organize. Basically, he had come had come to New York to look over their press setup and to take part in organizing the demonstration next week against the Foreign Policy Association meeting. He was a small tightly built sandy man with freckles and dark blue eyes, out of which he was looking now with unconcealed curiosity at her. The curiosity was mutual.

Besides Lohania, Natalie and herself, two other women sat on the Steering Committee: Jan, who was Oscar’s girlfriend, and Brenda, who was Bob Rossi’s. Both were juniors in college, both were blond, both were small and cute. Lohania, who claimed she could not tell them apart and who resented the fact that they always voted with their boyfriends, called them the Bubble Gum Twins. Pelican was an anarchist who insisted on challenging any show of authority. He was a member of the IWW, mostly for sentimental reasons. The other three men, Bill, Marv, and Big Al, were all sidekicks, loyal to Rossi or Oscar. Larkin, known as Lark, would have to carve his own following if he stuck around instead of returning to Kansas.

“Lark and Pelican.” Oscar rubbed his head. “We’re turning into an aviary. Where the hell is Natalie? Again.”

“Some kid from N.Y.U. was supposed to baby-sit Sammy. But he hadn’t shown up yet when I talked to her ten minutes ago,” Vida said.

“Damn it, she can’t sit on the Steering Committee if she can’t come to meetings,” Oscar said sternly. “This isn’t an optional activity if you happen to take time off from waxing your floor.”

“You won’t let her bring Sammy” Lohania said loftily. “Me, I think we should start them young.”

“I’d sooner let her bring a dog. Ten dogs,” Bob Rossi said.

“Well, what do you expect her to do?” Vida became aware she was being isolated by her defense of her sister.

“I don’t know,” Rossi drawled. “Maybe she could give it away.”

“You’re the one always saying we should organize the working class. Going tell them to give their babies away too?”

”Natalie’s supposed to be cadre” Oscar said. “We expect sacrifice from cadre.”

“Good,” Larkin said mischievously. “Then cadre can baby-sit. Why don’t you volunteer? It would be a great sacrifice”

A short silence stood among them, bristling with armaments. Then Rossi said, “I move we ask Natalie to resign from the Steering Committee if she misses another meeting.” His sidekick Marv immediately seconded the motion.

Lohania and Vida exchanged looks. They did vote as a block on certain issues, but she had not realized how much Oscar and Bob Rossi had come to resent that. Then why didn’t they attack Lohania or her? She guessed the answer. Natalie was the only married woman on the committee, the only mother. She realized she was not counting herself as married, but nobody else did either. The rest of them were all, at least theoretically, available to each other as sex objects, but Natalie wasn’t; somehow that meant they could take things out on her. It was unfair, but not something Vida could even say out loud without everybody’s telling her she was crazy; everyone but Natalie, who always understood those subvocal interplays in groups. She and Lohania looked at each other again, urging caution. She flashed Larkin a grateful look.

“Yeah, Natalie ought to join Another Mother for Peace,” Jan said sarcastically, looking at Oscar to see if he would approve.

Maybe Larkin had better politics toward women than Oscar or Rossi; she would see. Only Vida, Lohania, Larkin and Pelican voted against the censure of Natalie. Rossi was always talking about China. Vida had said she was all in favor of fund raising to send Rossi on a tour of the States to find some genuine peasants to ally with, to build the peasant-student alliance. Her big mouth got her in trouble.

But why was Oscar angry? She sensed that he felt she was growing too uppity. Her photograph in
Life,
not his. She had loved Oz, her pet name for him, partially out of gratitude because he did not view her as defined by her marriage. The year before, there was Leigh casually picking up day-glo girls at parties, in the Sheep Meadow, wandering through the bazaar of sexual possibilities plucking now an apricot, now a fresh green fig, now a pineapple; and there she was, Leigh’s wife, expected to listen to everybody’s love troubles, sympathize, bandage the wounded, mourn the missing, be prodded and pinched but harbor no sexual feeling toward anyone around her. Oz treated her exactly as he treated everyone else working with him on the teach-ins they had been organizing at every college around New York, the big spring demonstration they were joining in, the exams on the war they were handing out to students to show assumptions about the war were erroneous. He treated everyone in a friendly and just manner, she thought. Inside, she glimpsed a lonely man. When, she kissed him, he melted like a lump of milk chocolate. Now he was punishing her for her success, and she felt betrayed. Lohania was cautiously presenting snippets of their proposal: “Political education leading to action, that’s how we grow. It’s not like asking them to do study groups. We’re going into the streets next week.”

Was Larkin trying to make her part of his power base? That would remain to be seen, but he was surely, backing her for a reason. She felt fiercely loyal to Leigh. His love for her was her real base, her strength, her support, her rallying point, her refuge, but he did not charge for his love what other men did. He let her be herself. He let her survive intact. She would live with him forever and ever until she died—she hoped, before he did. Other men were just decoration. Nibbles. Dalliances. A way to paint in a few colors on a friendship. Explorations. Fantasies.

Lohania and she got about half what they wanted. She was assigned with Lark to write the propaganda for the demonstration, which had to go out to all chapters by the week’s end. Time was short for the job. The demonstration was scheduled for Thursday night of the next week when the Foreign Policy Association was meeting at the Hilton and Dean Rusk was addressing it. The easy task was to pull the kids out against Dean Rusk, the glib corporate liberal vulture. The harder task was to pull them out against the Foreign Policy Association, to explain how the ruling class controlled political options and discussion: a subtler education in how power worked in peacetime as well as in war, in setting perimeters to inquiry, establishing the terms of argument, defining the questions and issues. She did not think Larkin understood the battle. He was supporting her because he wanted to take on Oscar and Rossi. Tomorrow night she must write the pamphlet with him. Natalie could tell her what had been discussed at the women’s caucus. First things first. The demonstration was pressing; the women’s caucus would be around in two weeks. She never had trouble with men, anyhow. Some of the SAW women had been meeting since the spring to discuss their problems in and out of the organization and give one another support.

“How about a little inside action?” Bob Rossi said. “Can’t we manage some stink bombs?”

“You people aren’t going to discuss that kind of thing in your office, are you?” Larkin stared.

“What’s wrong with a pie in the face or a bit of stink in the ventilating system? You scared?” Rossi sneered.

”What’s wrong with you that you can’t figure out you might as well send your Red Squad notes on what you’re planning? Surely this room is bugged,” Larkin sneered back. “Get your volunteers and go for a walk to make any plans you mean to keep secret.”

Everyone looked startled. “You really think it’s bugged?” Vida asked.

“Don’t you take yourselves seriously enough to assume that?” Larkin asked with apparent innocence.

Rossi said, “Okay. I’m volunteering to go for a walk to decide what I’m volunteering for.”

“Me too!” Lohania flung up her black-tipped hands. “I love pigs in pokes” Rising, she held out her arm to Rossi. “Shall we stroll in the cool of the evening?”

Jan rose, her round face pinched with desperation. All meeting, Oscar had been ignoring her. “I’m not afraid. I’ll go inside too. I’m not scared of being busted.”

After the three had left, Vida remained a little shaken. They joked about the FBI and the CIA and the Red Squad, but this was the first time had suggested altering plans on the assumption of routine surveillance. The rhetoric and the reality of the Movement were wide open. Anyone could come to meetings and propose anything at all and take their chances. A strange chill remained in the air.

The first time she sat down to work with anyone was awkward. How would Larkin give and take? Where would the inevitable battles be? Automatically she sat at the typewriter, the way she worked with Oscar, who paced behind dictating ideas she turned into conversational English or argued with. Larkin pulled up a chair, facing her over the old machine. Slight, frail, with hair and lashes the color of wet coarse sand, he sat hunched and tense. She imagined him waiting for an opening, but to say what? “I want to use the demonstration for political education,” she said bluntly, showing him the outline she had produced with Lohania and Natalie: a rundown of corporate connections of the personages who would be dining at the Hilton, an analysis of the Foreign Policy Association’s means of manipulating public opinion. “I want the kids to learn how the power structure functions.”

He looked at the list. “What’s all this about South Africa and the Dominican Republic and CIA conduits? Sugar, oil, banks, foundations— this isn’t a war of banks or words. What has this got to do with the shooting war we’re trying to stop?”

“What this group does is form public opinion. Big American corpora tions make most of their profits abroad. They want to influence what ordinary people think they know about what’s going on in other countries and what they see as options for the U.S. to do. You have to start manipulating public opinion before you invade,” she argued.

“This isn’t a school, it’s a demonstration. To show our strength.”