Vida (52 page)

Leigh too was thin, as thin as when she’d first met him. He fussed about his weight and dieted sporadically and broke his diet whenever anything especially tempted him, so that he was always somewhat dieting, but the truth was he looked better with some flesh on him. When he was thin, he looked not lithe but bony—the stoop-shouldered sallow intellectual rather than the Movement media star. His nose stood out like a request, and the request worked on her as guilt: she should be feeding him, she should be making him happy. One of the foundations of their marriage had surely been that both of them believed strongly that Leigh had a right to whatever he needed to make him feel happy and functional, so that he could get on with his important political work.

They made love in the motel bed violently, compulsively, too rapidly. She was left still wanting to hold him but he moved back from her, eager to talk, blocked somehow. Patiently she probed for the knot. His hazel eyes focused as if on something hidden in her belly. “How could you go off with that schmuck?” he blurted out.

“Leigh, I’m not involved with him. I haven’t slept with him in a year.” It had been at least a couple months.

“You’ll go back to him.”

She stroked the curly hair off his forehead. A metallic white hair shone over his ear. “Never. I detest him.” Another hair gleamed and she plucked it, unable to resist.

“Ow! Why did you do that?”

“Look.” She showed him the silver hair like a hook in her palm. “Isn’t that beautiful?”

“I’m getting old. I’m falling apart. Why did you leave me?”

“I didn’t!” Gently she shook him “I’d never have left you, I’ll never find another man I’d rather talk to in my whole life.”

”But you liked making love with him better?”

“Never,” she lied bravely, remembering stickily that there had been a time when she certainly burned for Kevin. She had felt possessed by him as she never had by Leigh, obsessed. Not that Kevin made love better than Leigh; in fact, his ram-in, bang on style did not wear well. But that very pain of their coupling had convinced her it was more real; pain was real, difficulty was real. Every step that they took politically was harder, so what was hard and against the grain must be good. “Leigh, remember history! I didn’t leave you. I was forced under. I had the choice of going to prison for thirty years or vanishing. This way, at least we’re together sometimes.”

“I’m glad you didn’t go to prison,” he said with such hard vehemence she was startled. “It would’ve destroyed you, too!”

“Too? You’ve seen Lohania? She’s out? Is she living with you?”

“She’s changed. Completely. She doesn’t want to see me.”

“Is she bitter about doing time?”

“I can’t get far enough with her to find out. She doesn’t even say she doesn’t want to see me. She just doesn’t show up when we make a date. Sometimes when I come over, I know she’s behind the door but she won’t answer. She makes excuses … When I manage to be alone with her she tries to get me into bed as fast as possible, but I know she isn’t feeling it … you know?”

“What’s up?” She felt frightened. “What’s she into politically? Does she have to keep her nose clean till she’s off parole?”

“She’s not supposed to go to meetings or join organizations. But she doesn’t want to talk politics … She’s nervous. Jumpy.”

“Lohania’s always been high-strung.”

“This is different. Something’s broken. She’s asked me questions I don’t believe. Like she asked me right out if I see you … I said No, before I even thought. People just don’t ask those questions if they’re a little political”

“Leigh, maybe she wants to see me. Maybe she needs me.”

He shook his head. His mouth thinned. “I’m telling you. We’d just fucked. Practically a dry fuck. I knew she hadn’t come, and I felt sick because she faked it. She never used to do that.”

“Never. Lohania used to tell the truth even when it hurt. When I was mad at her, I’d think she’d do it especially when it hurt.”

“She used to get mad when she didn’t have an orgasm. Sometimes she’d make me feel guilty, like I was a real loser to let her down … But anyhow, she was lying there examining her nails …”

“What color? Oh, Leigh, I miss her.”

”How do I remember what color? She said, ‘Do you see Vida? Do you meet her?’ The hair stood up on my nape.”

“Leigh, she’d never hurt me. Next to Natalie, she was my best woman friend. We shared lovers, we shared our politics” She smiled. “Even our clothes.”

“I’m telling you, I can’t trust her.”

She lay staring at the white motel ceiling, the neat moon of light cast by the lamp next to the bed. Sometimes when she was driving down a highway and saw a sign winking M
OTEL
she would think abruptly and painfully of Leigh. Now she must puzzle through Lohania. Finally she asked, “What’s Randy Superpig doing these days?”

“He graduated law school. Working in the Kings County D.A’s office”

“He initiated the plea bargaining for her, I know it … “

Leigh frowned. “Haven’t run into him in a long time. Not face to face since that demonstration where I caught him getting kids to burn cars and I confronted him and he knocked me down with a club. But I unmasked him in the
Roach,
and then he had to surface for Lohania’s trial. Admit he was an agent.” Reminiscently Leigh rubbed his head. “You think he’s into Lohania somehow?”

“I’d look for him.”

He plucked at his wiry beard. “No. Not Lohania”

“Is it easier for you to think she’d ask for information for the FBI than to believe Randy is running her?”

“Running her how?”

“That’s for you to find out” She took his bearded face in her hands. “But Lohania isn’t all that’s eating you.”

He let himself fall back against the heaped-up pillows. “Why, don’t you know the news?” he asked rhetorically. “Just Friday I was ousted from the
Roach
collective. The women have taken it over and decided I’m not worth struggling with … Things at the station are stagnant. Nobody listens to us. From a hundred thousand listeners we’re down to ten fans, all phone-in freaks. Basically we provide a service for people who need to talk into a microphone.”

“One thing at a time. You got kicked off
Roach?
But you helped start it!”

“So? Nineteen sixty-seven is ancient history to these kids. The women have gone crazy.”

For a moment she was acutely uncomfortable, because she could hear Kevin saying the same thing two months before to Roger, who was traveling through on his way West: the women have all gone crazy. She was reminded enough of Kevin in the wail of outraged hegemony for her to remember Natalie’s sour appraisal of Leigh. “Things are changing between men and women,” she temporized. Of all things she did not want an argument with him. “A lot of even the slow changes hurt”

“Slow are they? Lucy and I called it off less than two months ago and now she’s a rabid dyke. She stands across the room surrounded by her coven and glares at me. They look like a motorcycle gang—”

“Lucy’s five feet four! You weren’t … sympathetic when she thought she was pregnant.”

“I won’t be pushed. If I want something I know it. You didn’t have to push me, did you? What crime is it not to live with somebody just because they think they want to latch on to you?”

“But if it wasn’t a crime for you to want to live with me before I wanted to live with you—”

“I know what I want” he reiterated, angry. “I’m not going to let some … woman move in because we balled a few times.”

“But you went on working together on the editorial committee. You got on well enough for that.”

“No, she was voted off. We couldn’t work together”

“Leigh! She was voted off because you broke up with her? No wonder she’s pissed. That was … not smart and not very political.”

“I was the one who put her on.”

“In 1968 you could get away with that” she said. “But it always made us mad.”

“Us? Nobody ever put you on a committee for that. I bet breaking up with Kevin won’t slow you down politically.”

“We’re on opposite sides of every issue” She realized he was flattering her, the exception, the perfect woman with whom all others shall be compared only to be found wanting. “But you’re really off the
Roach?
Or just off the editorial committee?”

“If I don’t have any say-so, why hang around?” Reaching toward the bedside table, he put on his glasses; it was as if he were no longer naked, as if the glasses were clothing. “I want to play you a program I aired last week … I’m going to look for a mainstream job and let those losers hang!”

The tape was a report on the COINTELPRO penetration of the New Left by the FBI. Leigh read Hoover’s directive: “ The purpose of this program is to expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize the activities of the various New Left organizations, their leadership and adherent … We must frustrate every effort of these groups and individuals to consolidate their forces or to recruit new or youthful adherents. In every instance, consideration should be given to disrupting the organized activity of these groups and no opportunity should be missed to capitalize upon organization and personal conflicts in their leadership’”

“But in 1968 we weren’t doing anything wrong. I mean anything violent. We were doing a lot of student organizing and regular big demonstrations and starting to have women’s stuff, and that year we had our first demonstration about mass transportation and pollution and subway fares.”

Leigh grinned at her. “They had you coming and going. Infiltrated, recorded, guilt-tripped.” He flicked the on switch again and began to play her exposes and confessions by former agents. “The FBI paid for the dynamite caps which I brought into the defense office. I had volunteered for the committee in order to clandestinely and illegally rifle the files and report on the defense attorney’s plans. I purchased chemicals for Molotov cocktails and taught a number of the youngsters how to manufacture them. I supplied one activist with a .22-caliber rifle. I passed out formulas for making explosives and incendiary devices. I was hoping to get people involved in this activity. All these actions were within FBI guidelines. The Bureau paid for my purchases.” “Informers are contract employees paid on salary or on piecework, as they provide information. I was a special penetration agent. My duties also included fomenting dissension in the office—a task that was extremely easy.”

After he had played the tapes she felt depressed, while he brightened up, listening to his own program. It was a good one. It was excellent. And several years too late.

“You were had,” Leigh said.

“But think of all the money and manpower they spent on us. At least they took us seriously. Hoover really thought we might change things.”

He set glasses back on the bedside table and leaned forward resting his head against her shoulder. “Babes, I’ve been feeling kind of lost. I’m not getting support for making hard decisions about whether I should take a straight job or not … Listen, with the heat dying some, think we could see each other regularly? Do you have to live so far away?”

“I can’t risk New York, but it would mean the world to me if we could be together again … “ Tears stung her eyes. She was too critical of him; being with Kevin had hardened her into an adversary stance. “Have you forgiven me for ruining our lives? Maybe if I was nearby we could live together. Like an hour or two out of the city. Just a long commute”

“I miss you a hundred times a week. Every time I walk into the kitchen and see your pots hanging on the pegboard. Guess what: I’m hard again. I haven’t had sex all week. All the women I know, they’re lesbians or they’re having babies. Maybe you could live in Queens?”

“I had in mind something a little farther” she smiled. “You may not think so, but that’s still New York … We’ll be married again. We’ll have a real life together. We’ll eat together and sleep together and have a home and share our lives” Still smiling, she began to weep silently on his shoulder. “I’ll make it happen, I promise!”

18

The Board met Sunday in a ski cabin Roger had rented for the weekend half an hour west of the farmhouse. Kiley had spent the night at the cabin with Roger. Vida and Lark had got back to Hardscrabble too late to do more than say good night to each other, turn in and then collect Kevin in the morning for their meeting.

Kiley was speaking, as precise and clear as always, yet electrifying. Vida experienced her appeal even as she wondered at it. Kiley’s pale ash blond hair stood out in a modified Afro, an aura of exclamation marks. “And we must avoid the pitfalls of a tendency to left adventurism we have been sliding toward, pitfalls that can undermine our mass strategy”‘ All that jargon, and yet her high eager voice galloped along passionate and cold, glinting like her ice blue eyes. Her forehead was high, smooth , and pallid, her mouth small, her chin and nose narrow, her brows thin and angled out and down. Kiley was small and wiry, built like a well-coordinated little boy. Next to her at the round oak dining-room table, Vida felt oversized, cumbersome. She had long ago recognized that Kiley could plot rings around her. In a way, meetings of the BOD consisted of watching Kiley try to get her way politically among a minefield of hot smoking male egos and jealous hegemonies and massive differences tilting into each other like plates of the earth’s crust, causing volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.