When We Argued All Night (7 page)

—You mean James thinks not doing something is something to do? said Myra. Just being good?

—Knowing what's true, more than being good, I think, Harold said.

—Well, I don't agree, Myra said. He was beginning to wonder, himself, whether knowing what's true was something to do. Henry James would have been astonished to discover that Harold Abramovitz compared his own membership in the Communist Party to Lambert Strether's renunciation of marriage and happiness at the end of
The Ambassadors
. The party had begun to seem like something required of him. He was quiet at meetings, though he argued vociferously for communism among his friends and relatives, who dismissed him with the same gesture: they flopped their right hands over and down, as if they flung off something slimy.

—You know, we could go to the lake, Myra said now.

—What lake?

—Gus's cabin.

—Oh! he said. Myra read not minds but the edge of minds. She knew he had not stopped thinking about the cabin in the mountains. Harold had known her now for two years but had not been to bed with her. Myra was too scary. She'd know too well what he was thinking. Myra would laugh.

—Do you still know Gus? Harold said. The thought was distressing, but the thought of the cabin was exciting. He stood up and she stood too. They entered the park and began walking.

—Of course I know him, said Myra.

—But how is that possible? Harold said. You're not still . . . you know?

—What do you mean, how is it possible? said Myra. There are lots of ways to know people. Maybe he'll let us go there. I can ask, at least.

He wondered whether she meant she spent her time with him differently—having renounced him, perhaps, imitating the characters in James despite her protestations. He wanted to go. He didn't want to quarrel.

—He'd lend it to us? he said. Or he'd be there?

—I'll find out.

Harold didn't want to be the guest of the man who had had an affair with Myra—of the man and his wife. But the cabin was too small for guests, as they'd proved when they'd been there. He couldn't stop asking questions. You mean you're friends? Does his wife know about you and Gus?

—I'm tired, Myra said. They sat down on a bench near the boat pond. Children brought toy boats to float in the pond, and nursemaids looked after the children—even now, even in the Depression, people had nursemaids or might be nursemaids. He speculated on whether nursemaids would favor a revolution.

—I don't know if she knows, Myra said. It's not a thing we discuss.

—But how can you be her friend?

Myra ignored his question. Look, I'll ask him, she said. Then she added, I wonder what she gets paid—tilting her head toward a uniformed woman. She could be mean to the kid and nobody would know.

Her mind went from topic to topic, sometimes responding to something he hadn't yet said. Myra seemed to have no preconceptions, and she hadn't worked out a set of ideas or ideals in advance, so she might think anything about anything—Gus, Henry James, the women in the park, who might be oppressed working people and might be Cinderella's stepsisters. She didn't think in categories and didn't seem to have an inward list of ideas she believed. Harold had made up his mind about so much: he envied her freedom of thought. He felt old. What would it be like to read a newspaper with that kind of freshness, without ready opinions about Roosevelt, about Hitler and the Jews, about the threat of war? Surely Myra knew she was against Hitler. The Germans had gone from harassing Jews and depriving them of rights to dispossessing them, settling them in concentration camps. Wouldn't Myra know right away that this was wrong? She didn't look at each story about Hitler with an open mind, surely, curious to see if this time, perhaps, he'd make sense? Of course, her feelings weren't just the same as his—she wasn't Jewish. And sometimes—was there a thrill to this or only the curiosity that arises from repulsion?—sometimes there was the tiniest hint that, long ago and out of earshot of Harold or anyone like him, she might have been part of some nasty conversations about Jews. No, Myra was no more anti-Semitic than any other gentile, but surely they all—well.

The point, though, had nothing to do with Hitler and the Jews. It had to do with sex. The point was that if Myra saw a man and wanted to sleep with him, she did not flip open a book of personal rules that included
Stay away from married men
, or any other kind of men, because she had no book of personal rules. And everyone else seemed to have one—tattered, thin, half-forgotten, but available.

—Do you do that often? Harold said.

—Do what? The sun was warm here and she sounded sleepy.

He hesitated. Do you take many lovers? he asked.

—Well, what business is that of yours! said Myra, jumping to her feet. She sounded more playful than angry, but as they continued to walk, she said, more quietly and slowly than usual, You think I'm a slut, don't you? And suddenly her tone was ugly. All you think about is the suffering masses. Contemplating my disgusting little life makes you feel pure! It gives you a thrill to think about people like me—well, that's pretty despicable, don't you think? You don't have the nerve to live your own life, you just like scaring yourself with mine!

Her words wouldn't stop. Harold was strangely elated, then troubled. He thought she might be right. He was stodgy and stupid, and of course women—he'd known this forever—laughed at him.

—Myra!

—I don't know why I waste time with you and your stupid books. You're so superior, but what you know isn't everything!

—I know that. I'm not superior. The path they were on had taken them out to Fifth Avenue again. As she spoke, he felt thick—physically thick—muffled in his clothes and his fleshy body, kept from thinking or acting. How could someone like him presume even to think about people who worked with their hands, people like his father—to think about what they needed, what society should do for them? He stared at Myra. He had not looked at her, not really, in all this time they'd been sitting and walking side by side. Her hair was cut shorter lately. She wore a brooch at the neck of her white blouse. She squinted because it was late afternoon and she faced west, toward the park. Her squint made her face seem childlike.

—You're good. You're serious, he faltered.

—Serious? You're damned right I'm serious, Myra said. She glanced at her wristwatch. Late, she said. So long.

—Wait, said Harold.

—I have to go, she said. She touched his arm as if to get a faster start, crossed Fifth Avenue against the light, and hurried down the cross street. Harold watched her go, then walked north for no reason, turned, turned again.

6

O
ne night Artie said, Enough already.

—Enough of what? It was November, still 1938, and he and Harold were walking fast after a quick supper at an automat, walking to the next subway stop because they were in the middle of an argument.

—Enough of this women laughing stuff.

—But I just told you, Harold said. She ran away.

—Who cares? The meshuggeneh shikse! Let her run, Artie said. First you take advantage of a girl, then you dump her, and finally you figure out that everybody should feel sorry for you. It's disgusting.

—That's not the way it is, honestly, Harold said.

—Yeah, I know, I know. They were quiet for a block or so, as often happened when they disagreed.

—Did you see, Holland may take some of the refugees? Even more predictably these days, after silences Harold talked about Germany and the Nazis. Before he'd begun worrying about the Jews, it had been Spain, and Harold's shame that he didn't want to enlist. My mother would die if I enlisted, he had often said. But that's no excuse. Half the Abraham Lincoln brigade is guys whose mothers feel just the same way. The truth is I don't want to.

Artie hadn't wanted to either, but he didn't feel ashamed of not wanting to.

They came to the station. Artie had to go to Brooklyn, and Harold lived a few stops downtown. It's late, Artie said.

—I'm going to keep walking, said Harold. Talking about women, Artie had gotten nowhere with him, as usual. Everything came back to the Jews in Europe. As Harold turned away, his shoulders sagged and he looked older than he was, and for a moment Artie wanted to run after him. For a man who hadn't put a prayer shawl around his shoulders since his bar mitzvah, Harold was obsessed with being Jewish. Harold—and his whole family—could think about frightening subjects longer than Artie or any of his brothers or his parents. Enough, his father would say, if someone began talking about Hitler. His mother would weep and run from the room, and his father would say, You have to upset her? But when Hitler's speeches were on the radio, the whole family listened.

As he rode over the river to Brooklyn, Artie's mind returned to the subject of women. Harold thought Artie attracted women without trying, while he had no success. But Harold's life was full of women, while Artie had—well, he sort of had Evelyn, but that never went anywhere. If his supervisor had once liked him, the feeling had turned to hatred. Staring at his own reflection in the train's dark window, the lights of the city behind his own narrow, bespectacled face, Artie understood for a moment that he'd caused Beatrice London to hate him. He should stop teasing and challenging her, if it wasn't too late. He knew he wouldn't stop, just as he knew that his various brothers wouldn't change in one way or another, and the thought made him sad.

It was Beatrice London's fault, anyway. He had to get away from her, even if that meant being alone in a classroom with kids all day. He had no idea what you did with children, though he'd gone back to City College and daydreamed his way through some ed courses so he'd be qualified for a regular teaching job if he could get one. He was twenty-eight: he should get a real job, find a real girl, get out of his parents' apartment. But that was another sad thought. He liked slouching around with a camera, playing a little handball in the park on weekends, listening to music or walking the streets with Evelyn—or alone, whistling and daydreaming. Women in daydreams were easier to manage, and he hadn't seen Evelyn since their argument about—whatever it had been about.

But a few weeks later she called him and they walked. The weather was cool, and they followed their cold-weather routine; the walk would lead, eventually, not to ice cream but to tea in the kitchen of Evelyn's parents. Excited to see her, Artie had much to tell: at the last minute—right at the start of the new school year—he'd been called to teach seventh-grade social studies. The classroom maps were from before the world war, and the principal didn't like him, but the kids were funny and he was done with Beatrice London forever. I can't learn all those kids' names, he said. I call them all Johnny or Sadie.

They reached the two-family house where she lived, but instead of leading him inside, Evelyn dropped to the porch steps. She ran her hands through her hair and said, Do you think you might want to get married?

Artie sat down. Something went through his body as if he'd swallowed a fishing line with a hook attached, but it was not exactly painful. A hook made of metal so bright it seemed sharp, though it was not sharp. He began to whistle. After a while, he said, Why do you ask?

—Somebody wants to marry me. I'm twenty-seven. There comes a point. But if you want me to, I'll say no.

She wiggled her shoulders as if to say six of this, half a dozen of that, but her voice betrayed that the question was not casual.

—Say no, Artie said. Who is he?

—A nice person. He's becoming a pharmacist.

—A pharmacist, Artie said, somehow expelling the syllable through his nose. A pha-ah-ah-ah-armacist.

—Artie!

—So you're proposing? he said. He stuck his finger in her side. Her blouse felt stiff to his finger, but under it her body was soft. Sometimes when he put his arm around her, steering her or agreeing with her, he moved it from her neck to her back. He knew Evelyn's back, even the bump where he could feel underwear, better than her side or her front. Now she pulled away, ticklish. He poked her again. You're proposing? he said again. I have to tell my children their mother proposed to me? That's the sort of woman you are? Why didn't you tell me? All these years I've wasted on a woman who proposes!

She stood up, leaned over him, and placed her hands around his neck. I strangle people, too, she said.

What came to Artie was the song from the WPA protest, which he often sang for no reason at all. As he sang it this time—gasping, as if being choked—he found he could alter it for the occasion:

Here's your answer, Mr. Ridder,

You had better reconsider,

Stop the strangling, Mr. Ridder,

Or I won't marry you!

They were both virgins. Every touch was exquisite.

7

H
arold didn't see Myra for four months after she ran away from him. He knew that Myra didn't quite believe other people's feelings mattered, but he had liked trying to become the exception. He missed her. She read the books he proposed. They had moved on from Henry James to Edith Wharton and newer authors—W. Somerset Maugham, Aldous Huxley. Myra read childishly but eagerly and passionately. But she was unprincipled, Harold reminded himself, not truly serious. His comrades at party meetings would disapprove of her.

Harold had always been unsure as a Communist Party member—unsure before he joined, no less unsure now. But he could prove to those who were confused why the Soviet stand on some issue was correct, why as Americans they should support it. He could argue forcefully for positions he didn't quite believe in. He resisted handing out leaflets or ringing doorbells to recruit new members, but he wasn't the only one. What his heart had told him in the first place, though, it continued to tell him. It might not make sense to sit in meeting halls so long his backside hurt from the wooden chairs, or in somebody's living room until late at night, trying to make a distinction among positions that seemed all but identical. But the Communists were right about the struggle of the workers, and though his socialist parents scorned the party, Harold thought it might well be true that only the discipline and theory of communism could free people like them. The Communists were right about his father, and even if they were wrong about the revolution—Harold was never certain that a revolution was imminent in the United States, never even sure that what had been accomplished in the Soviet Union was as good as people said—they were right about what the right sort of revolution would lead to.