When We Argued All Night (23 page)

They talked for an hour.

I
t was Christmas break when Brenda finally got around to reading the essay from
The Nation
that her father had sent her. Her parents had wanted her to fly home for the holidays, but she didn't. Richie had hinted that he'd have more free time because Lee was going to visit relatives.

But Brenda never knew when Richie would come, and she had only one date marked on her calendar during the Christmas season. The
Speak Out
group proposed having a party, and pleased Brenda by wanting her company. Most were estranged from their families or far from home, stranded in this agricultural valley when they'd meant to go either to Los Angeles and become movie stars or to San Francisco, where they'd live in an enlightened and druggy society.

—We could do it at my house, she'd said, and today she was straightening her apartment in readiness. She had an uneasy feeling that the college administration would not approve of this party. But none of these kids were in her classes—well, Grace was going to take Brenda's composition class in the spring, but Grace didn't count. She was older than Brenda. These were good kids, and nobody else would know.

It was a few days before Christmas, and she hadn't heard from Richie for weeks. Brenda had been inside all day; the weather was chilly and raw, and she'd been postponing a trip to the store. It was maddening to care, but if she left she might miss him, and she couldn't leave. She was desultorily straightening her desk when she found the pages torn from
The Nation
.
HAROLD
, her father had written in red in the top margin of the first page, with an arrow, in case she didn't notice the byline. And near the top, in the left margin, he'd scrawled something else she couldn't read. She carried the pages across the room. Her apartment was warmed by one heater, under a grate in the floor, and the only way to get truly warm in the damp California winter was to stand on the grate, which she did for so long her shoes had developed ridges to match the wrought-iron grille's pattern. She stood swaying slightly and read Harold's essay.
Vietnam and the Graying Radical
, the piece was called.

In the last few tempestuous months, as the inspired and picturesque young with shaggy heads and peace signs have taken to the streets, among the myriad reactions of their elders it would be a mistake to overlook the rueful and perhaps embarrassed look on the faces of older men and women marching beside them—or not marching, hesitating as they slowly lace up cracked walking shoes in outmoded styles that have already tramped many miles.

Now she made out what her father had written next to these words.
What does he know about shoes?
Harold discussed the views of several aging thirties radicals toward the Vietnam war, using their books and articles as well as interviews to discuss first a man in his fifties who now led the peace movement in Cleveland and had been finding something to protest about the American government since 1935; then a professor who'd written books linking radical American movements to those in Europe and elsewhere; and finally a journalist who had renounced his early radicalism and now attacked the Left.

She kept reading, standing, until she reached a more personal passage near the end.

It may be of some use to describe the political and, indeed, moral shifts in thinking of one obscure young radical, who has aged into a less political person—an English professor—but who watches the marches with envy and has tentatively come to the conclusion that it makes sense to participate, his doubts stemming not from uncertainty about this abhorrent war but about the moral validity of protest when protest is sexy, when it's personally useful, and when it's fun.

Now she went into her living room and sat down to concentrate, as Harold described times she'd heard about only from her father. He had grown up the child of immigrant Jewish socialists, he explained, and had been drawn in when he began attending Communist protests and marches as a bystander.
But I have to admit,
Harold wrote,
that I was as entranced by the image of myself—the fervent young radical—as by the ideology I embraced.
There was something Brenda the English teacher didn't like about Harold's prose. She didn't like
embraced
. But she kept reading. She'd always found him irresistible but absurd, absurd but irresistible.

And I also disliked myself and saw through my posturings. I found reasons to tell my friends that I was a Communist, explaining to myself that I told them in order to proselytize, to win converts; but I knew why I told them: because it made me seem mysterious and bold. Women liked it. They'd spend time with me—go to bed with me—in order to talk me out of my politics, or that's what they told themselves they were doing. We were all in a game together, a play.

Later in life, I worked as a New York City high school teacher, only to lose my job when my past connection to Communism—long ago disavowed—came to light. I was guilty then, too, of vanity. I taught, and worked for civil rights, in a poor neighborhood. I secretly told myself I was a hero, but the greater secret was that I was of small or no utility to the people I supported, just someone entranced by the idea of himself.

Brenda, shamed and thrilled, knew what he meant. She thought he should have mentioned his friend, her father, but that thought disappeared in her pleasure. She felt the same way. She too had been a vainglorious fool, standing up for civil liberties and admiring herself for doing it, facing down the evil dean. But Harold continued:

But what I have just confessed is not the whole story, and that's what gives me hope—hope for myself but, more important, hope for the hirsute present generation of advocates for justice, who in their own way are surely as self-conscious, as self-satisfied, and as hungry for the romance of opposition as my friends and I were. I knew when I became a Communist that I was, in part, ridiculous, and I have to trust the person who, even then, writhed with shame in the night but kept his membership card current: if I had not been sincere as well as ridiculous, I would not have joined the Communist Party, would not have remained in it for several years. The party has long since lost its glamour for me, but the reasons I joined were good reasons, and the ideals that made me join are ideals I hold today: justice for the poor, justice for the working man, reward for labor. The Communist Party, it turned out, had no idea how to go about achieving these ideals—and, worse, it was in love with authoritarianism, but its desires were the desires I still hold. I can't, finally, blame myself for joining the Communist Party, however many girls it enabled me to lure into my shabby digs.

This was a new thought for Brenda. Her father had invariably spoken of Harold's membership in the Communist Party as foolishness, and she had assumed Harold had come to agree with him.

I gave up Communism when Stalin agreed with Hitler to share Poland: when they signed a nonaggression pact in the summer of 1939—which did not dismay everyone I knew in the party. Some shrugged, insisting it was a trick, and held out until the terrible revelations of 1956, but to me—a Jew already terrified for European Jewry—having anything to do with Hitler was unthinkable. I was true to what I believed—as I was true, later on, when I taught and tried to help my ghetto students survive (literally—one was killed by police) their difficult lives.

We are lucky enough to live in a country in which protesting is usually not fatal—in which it is often fun and sexy—but when the times command dissent, we must protest anyway. So I raise a glass to the kids who fill the streets today, shouting down this abhorrent war, and sometimes you'll see me in the rear, in those worn-out shoes, trying to keep up with young people spryer than I.

Brenda sat thinking about Harold Abrams and what she had read for longer than she should have, with a party to prepare for. Then, abruptly, she wanted to be outdoors, even if it was raining. She thrust her arms into her jacket sleeves and was out the door before her jacket was buttoned. The rain had increased, and as she drove, the windshield wipers swept noisily back and forth, with a syncopated squeal as the right one, which must have been bent, lagged. The immediate effect of reading Harold's article was to make Brenda generous: she bought more food, more beer and soda than she would have. She seemed to have something to celebrate.

She expected eight or ten kids, but fifteen showed up, one bringing a plate of Christmas cookies in different shapes, decorated with colored sprinkles, and another a dish of guacamole and a bag of tortilla chips. Several brought records. She put on
The White Album
and the students nodded shyly when they recognized the music, as if they had wondered about her taste. She left the beer in the refrigerator and put bottles of Coke out on the table with the food, but after an hour or so, she noticed that beer—her own beer and some in brands she hadn't bought—was on the table. She wanted a beer herself but had taken Coke because she was the teacher. Conversation had begun slowly and shyly, as if they weren't exactly the people they were at school, but now there was more talk, louder when it was hard to speak over the sound of the records—someone had turned up the volume. More people came in and the group divided, so there were several conversations at once. Grace arrived with her husband, a beaming man who looked like a minister. Again, talk slowed, but finally everyone—even Brenda—took beers, and that helped. She forgot to think as a teacher and became a hostess, worrying that her party was boring and stiff. So she was pleased to see young people she didn't know and tried to get them into conversation. Some didn't know she was a teacher, and some were probably her age. One girl said no, she wasn't a student at the JC, but her boyfriend was, and she nodded at a couple of young men near the food table, neither of whom Brenda knew. She smelled a joint, excused herself, and went to speak to Grace. Should I try and stop people from smoking dope? she said.

Grace looked at her in a funny way, and said, It might be too late.

Brenda wondered what Grace's husband thought. What do you do? she said. He wasn't a minister, at least. He sold insurance. I know a lot of these kids, he said. Our kids are younger, but I've seen these around. He pointed. I know that girl. Nice girl.

Grace laughed, but she looked uncomfortable.

—You think I should make them stop smoking dope, don't you? Brenda said.

—Don't go by what I think, said Grace, which was not what she'd have said at school, where she spoke her mind. There was no one else to ask.

Brenda went over to the two boys passing a joint back and forth. I have to ask you to stop, she said.

—Stop what?

—I'll get in trouble with my landlord, Brenda said. Take the dope outside. No, don't. She pictured them smoking—all of them smoking—lined up in front of the house. Just put it away until you're somewhere else, okay?

—Sure, one boy said, but he looked annoyed. They soon left.

Toward midnight, a drunken boy tried to kiss her. You're the nicest teacher I ever had, he said, and then she realized that he was, indeed, her own student: a quiet boy named Neil in the back row of a remedial English class. Neil, honey, no, she said gently, and she was afraid he'd cry.

—Come in the kitchen, she said. Help me make coffee. He was blond, skinny—he probably weighed less than she did—with tight shoulders. In class she had wished she could rub his shoulders and make his neck look less taut, and now she wondered nervously if she'd been attracted to him and if he'd sensed it. The thought embarrassed her and she opened another beer. When she saw three more kids smoking a joint, she didn't stop them. She and Neil made coffee, and she made him drink some. I don't really like coffee, he said. She carried cups and mugs into the living room—she had not thought about coffee and hadn't bought paper cups—and then brought the milk container and sugar. She began throwing out beer bottles. She took the needle off the record on the turntable—Richie Havens—and turned on the overhead light. Only six or eight kids were left, and now they began to look for their coats. A small blond girl threw her arms around Brenda. She was a stranger and had come with two other strangers. I never, never, never thought, she said. When Brenda was finally alone, she was suddenly depressed and didn't try to clean up, but went to bed.

She was awakened by the doorbell, frightened before she was fully awake, as if the ringing was the next event in a bad dream. She never thought of ignoring the bell. The ring was prolonged, and in her dishevelment, blinking and holding her head down because a headache was overtaking her, she struggled into her bathrobe and to the door. It was light out. Her breath tasted unpleasant, and she held her hand to her mouth. Richie stood outside, and if he hadn't already seen her, Brenda might have called an apology and gone back to bed. But her heart was tumbling in her chest as well; she was happy to see him. She'd feared, the night before, that Richie would never come back and that if he didn't, she was somehow not the person she was claiming to be, not the person the party guests thought they were looking at.

When she let him in, he put his arms up as always, but she didn't move into them, embarrassed.

—What went on here? he said. The room smelled of stale beer and crushed potato chips.

—Give me a minute, you woke me up, she said.

—What have you been doing?

—Richie, I need to pee.

—Who was here?

—Students. The
Speak Out
group—you know, the kids who want to put out a magazine. Not all kids.

—Not all kids? In his coat, he began gathering paper plates. Where does the garbage go? he called.

—Stop! Sit down. Let me just wash my face. She went into the bathroom, peed, washed her face, brushed her teeth. She would have liked to shower, but she was afraid he'd leave.