New York City, 1968
Eve would not be a “Good German.” She would not get lost in a fog of rationalizations. She would not, when the Vietnam War finally came to an end, clear the condensation from her glasses and cry, “I never knew; I never knew the terrible things we were doing!” as the “Good Germans” had once done. She knew. She knew what American soldiers were doing to villagers in Vietnam, knew what they were doing to children in those villages. Children. She knew that napalm burned between 1,500 and 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and if you tried to wipe it off it only spread, until eventually flesh melted from the bone.
Children suffered this death, delivered by bombs dropped from the sky by her country. Her country.
Warren had a book of photographs, purchased in Paris, showing scenes from everyday life in Vietnam after the French had finally retreated and before the Americans arrived. She could not stop studying its pages. She was especially drawn to a picture of two dozen children or so, bunched shoulder to shoulder in disorderly rows, widemouthed and laughing, two of them mid-clap, captured in the middle of delight, their bare feet on the dirt, or perhaps it was sand. What were they laughing at? What was bringing them such delight? Anything and everything. Children were delighted so easily—this she knew from her own teaching.
Only a few years after that photo was taken, the Americans would arrive. She thought of the boy in the photo who was clowning around with his hands on top of his head, reminding her of Malcolm, her own class clown. She imagined a boy like him walking down a dirt road, taking lunch to his father. She imagined a noise coming from above, the child looking up to the sky. Spotting it. Spotting the plane overhead. She imagined him watching as bombs tumbled out from its insides. How graceful the bombs might look, falling. How elegant. And then the fire, gasoline mixed with a rubber perfected in the labs of Dow Chemical, creating a viscous, burning gel that stuck to the flesh.
Her parents were shocked—shocked!—by those who lit themselves on fire in protest, burning themselves to death, first Thich Quang Duc in Vietnam, protesting the treatment of Buddhists under the South Vietnamese government, but soon followed by American martyrs, so overcome with the evil America was perpetuating—in their names—that they made the ultimate sacrifice, their flaming bodies demanding that we pay attention to what was happening, pay attention now.
She remembered talking to her mother soon after the suicide of Norman Morrison, a thirty-two-year-old Quaker who, in 1965, set himself on fire just outside Robert McNamara’s office at the Pentagon, his baby daughter covered in kerosene before he handed her to a bystander.
“What a sick, sick man,” her mother had said. “To kill himself in front of his baby. And he had two other young children at home, and a wife! Imagine a father doing that to his family.”
“What a sick, sick nation we live in,” Eve had answered. “To bomb innocent Vietnamese villagers in the name of freedom. Imagine doing that to an autonomous country halfway around the world.”
“You do not understand the very real threat of communism,” her mother had rebuked. At the time, Eve had just rolled her eyes, but were they to have the same conversation today (they wouldn’t—Mrs. Whalen flat-out refused to engage in political discussions with Eve), she would tell her mom that she now considered herself a communist. She no longer simply wanted the United States to withdraw from Vietnam. She wanted the National Liberation Front to win. She wanted colonized people all over the world to break free, to smash imperialism, to be autonomous, to live as they so desired.
She did not start from this place. She had once been a liberal, like Daniella and Pete, who had once been a Young Republican. Daniella and Pete had marched down Fifth Avenue two years ago along with tens of thousands of others, demanding that the United States withdraw from Vietnam. She had not marched in their group but had seen them among the other Barnard and Columbia students. The banner they held read: “Unitarian Universalists for Peace.”
Eve was with people from the Independent Council on Vietnam—ICV—Warren, Abby, David, Mark. They carried signs, too. Warren’s read: “Not with My Life You Don’t.” Hers, cut into the shape of a stop sign, simply read: “Stop War.” Abby, ever the provocateur, carried a poster board that read: “Girls Say Yes to Guys Who Say No.” But the most compelling sign she saw was held by a black man in a group of black marchers: “The Vietcong Never Called Me a Nigger.”
There were so many people at the march—young, old, black, white, college kids, working class—she honestly believed that LBJ would listen. (How could he not hear their chants? “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”) Back then she believed that the United States was a good nation that had made a bad decision in entering the Vietnam conflict but that, when faced with the will and the conscience of its people, would reverse its course, correct itself, take a dose of painful medicine and recognize how brutal it had become. Warren had laughed at her naïveté. The United States had always been a brutal country, he said, beginning with the genocide of the American Indians. And then the country itself—the actual White House, for fuck’s sake—was built by enslaved humans, kidnapped from their home country and brought here in chains, kept in submission by the lash and the noose.
Back in the spring of Eve’s sophomore year, Warren had convinced her to tutor kids in Harlem through a program called the Citizenship Council. “Don’t be such a child,” he had said when she sniffed that she didn’t know if they would want her. After all, CORE had just rejected her application to go to Mississippi for the summer. But Warren was right (Warren was always right), and so she had signed up. Shortly after she joined, one of the Council leaders, David Gilbert, told her the story of how he had come to see the link between the shameful treatment of blacks in America and villagers in Vietnam. David had arrived at his tutee’s apartment in Harlem upset because he had just read a newspaper account of a massive bombing in Vietnam. He said to the child’s mother, “Our government is bombing people on the other side of the globe for no good reason.”
“Bombing people for no good reason, huh?” the mother had said. “Must be colored people who live there.”
• • •
Many of the members of ICV were Jewish. Abby’s father had immigrated to America in his teens, but many of his relatives, including his brother, stayed in Poland. They all died in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. “We didn’t know!” the “Good Germans” had cried when they were forced to tour Buchenwald shortly after the Allies declared victory. The “Good Germans” walked past piles of emaciated corpses, shielding their eyes, ducking their heads. Eve had seen the pictures. She had imagined her own mother taking such a tour, claiming ignorance as she held a handkerchief over her nose.
She would not be a “Good German.” She would not, as Pete and Daniella had chosen to do, slide into cozy domesticity, hide out in the universities, get a mortgage, buy a car. Pete and Daniella were married now, both enrolled in graduate school at Emory, Pete studying history, Daniella studying law. She and Warren had gone to dinner with them a couple of months ago, when they were up north visiting Pete’s parents in Connecticut. It had been the first time Eve had seen Daniella since the spring of 1966, when they had graduated from Barnard. Three days after graduation, Daniella married Pete. Eve refused to attend the wedding, even though Daniella had asked her to be her maid of honor.
For their reunion dinner, Daniella had suggested they meet at some Chinese place in Harlem, and Eve and Warren had agreed since it was near their apartment. But the place was an embarrassment—an Americanized version of “the Orient” where the host wore a red silk dress and the piped-in music was of the Frank Sinatra variety. They didn’t even offer chopsticks; Warren had to ask for them. “Bet they don’t have a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book, either,” Warren had whispered to Eve, making her laugh.
Daniella was wearing the big diamond ring Pete had given her for their engagement, an heirloom piece crafted in 1912 that had belonged to Pete’s grandmother. Eve once cared about such things. Her own mother had a similarly impressive ring, though it was made in the late 1930s, an era not known for its opulence. But the diamond was of a respectable size. As a girl Eve had dreamed of the day she would get engaged, a handsome man offering her a ring with a big rock sparkling from its center (the diamond needed to be more than a carat, but not much larger or it would run the risk of being gauche). But now it struck her as immoral to wear something of so much value when there were so many impoverished people in the world. She suggested Daniella give the ring to the Panthers.
“I hardly think they would want it,” Daniella had said, eating her lo mein with a fork. “Aren’t they all about autonomy and self-determination?”
“They are, sure,” Warren said. “But they’d deign to hawk it for cash.”
He wore his own ring, given to him by a North Vietnamese commander he met while on a secret trip to Cuba. It was made with the metal of a downed American fighter jet.
• • •
During dinner Daniella told Eve that their old friend Kitty Ridley had moved to Atlanta but that she was now Kitty Steed, having married her English professor during her junior year at Belmont.
“I take it she dropped out?” asked Eve.
“No, she graduated. She said she just didn’t take any classes from her husband once they were married. He’s teaching at Emory now. They actually seem really happy.”
“I wonder which young student he’ll fuck next,” Eve mused.
Daniella raised a brow but didn’t say anything. “Oh, and I keep meaning to tell you, I ran into Charlie in Virginia Highlands, at Moe’s and Joe’s, which is kind of a hangout for Emory law students. I met his fiancé, Fig.” Daniella gave Eve an amused look.
“God. Their wedding is next weekend.”
“You going?” asked Daniella, her voice suddenly tight.
She shook her head. Daniella sighed, seemingly relieved. Jesus, Daniella was still upset that Eve hadn’t attended her wedding. Wasn’t Daniella the one who used to tell her to de-personalize, that the movement was bigger than any individual drama?
“She told me it was quite a feat to find a lipstick that matched the color of the bridesmaids’ dresses.”
Eve couldn’t help but laugh. Of course Charlie would choose to marry a girl who went by “Fig,” a girl who was concerned about her bridesmaids’ lipstick matching their dresses. She probably had her silver pattern picked out for her the day she was born. Granted, so had Eve, not that she would ever use it. Indeed, she had sold the silver tea set that Grandmommy had given her, had sold it and given the money to Warren to help finance his Cuba trip.
Just as Daniella had done, Fig had asked Eve to be the maid of honor in her wedding, the invitation issued through Eve’s mother during one of their increasingly tense phone calls.
“That’s ridiculous,” Eve responded. “I haven’t even met her.”
“Of course you have,” said Eve’s mother. “We invite her family to our Christmas party every year. And she was a cheerleader at Lovett, just two grades above you. You would have seen her at the Coventry-Lovett game.”
“She must not have made much of an impression, because I don’t remember her.”
“Do you realize what a terrible snob you’ve become, darling?”
“I learned it from the best, Mommy,” said Eve, her throat tightening the way it always did when she argued with her mother. “In any event, tell Fig I’m not going to be able to make it to the wedding. There’s too much shit going on up here.”
Eve’s mother immediately hung up the phone. Any time profanity slipped through Eve’s lips, her mother hung up on her, as if bad language simply burned her delicate ears.
“It’s almost comical how outraged your mother becomes over the stupidest things,” Warren told Eve when she relayed their conversation.
He was right. Both of her parents were outraged by the wrong things. They were outraged the previous Christmas when the Driving Club put up a red tree (“So tacky,” her mother had moaned), but they certainly weren’t outraged over Vietnam. Her father had been a medic during the Second World War, and he saw the current conflict as a continuation of the United States’ benevolent presence on the world stage. Besides, his son was not at risk of being sent over there. Charlie had graduated from Emory Law School in 1966, just as he turned twenty-six, placing him outside of any danger of being drafted. Eve had a cousin who was in the National Guard, but so far he had only been sent as far as Houston. She knew of a few boys from Coventry who had enlisted, one in the National Guard and two in the Air Force. She didn’t know anyone who was a ground soldier.
That is, except for Ada’s only son, Albert. He had been drafted in 1966. And unlike Charlie, Pete, and Warren with their student draft deferrals in hand (Warren was getting a master’s in sociology at the New School), Albert had no choice but to serve or face a long jail sentence.
“Can’t you get him into the National Guard?” Eve had pleaded with her father on the phone after he casually mentioned that Albert’s draft number had come up.
“The wait list for the Guard is miles long.”
“Don’t you know someone on the draft board?” she had asked.
“Sweetheart, our country is at war. Albert is of age. It is his duty and responsibility to serve. And you know about the G.I. Bill, don’t you? When Albert comes home he will be able to enroll in college, paid for by his service.”
“If he comes home,” Eve had said.
He did not. Ada didn’t even have the comfort of having his body to bury. Small in stature and quick-footed, Albert had been a “tunnel rat.” A booby trap went off while he was underground, so that he literally walked into his grave.
• • •
Her mother would sometimes mail newspaper clippings, most of them announcing that some person Eve had known a million years ago had gotten married. So Eve was not surprised to receive Charlie and Fig’s wedding announcement, which had run in the Atlanta Journal. The picture of Fig and her ten bridesmaids was in black and white, so Eve was unable to tell if her new sister-in-law had pulled off a successful lipstick match. When she showed the picture to Warren, he commented on how many people could be fed with the money spent on that one lavish reception.
“It’s not like your family is a bunch of pious monks,” Eve said, feeling defensive despite herself.
“Of course they aren’t. Shit, my dad will be the first with his back against the wall when the revolution comes,” said Warren. “But until then, I’m happy he sent me this.”
He showed her the check for a thousand dollars, ostensibly as an early Christmas present, though really, his father sent checks every few months. Eve’s did, too.
Eve hated that they needed money from their parents. It wasn’t as if they were lazy. It wasn’t as if they were “flower children,” dropping out of society and living off the land. They wanted to change society. They wanted to dig out the rot. Their latest project was the founding of a community school in the basement of a Friends meeting house in the Bronx. Called The Children’s Place, it welcomed four- to ten-year-olds. It offered open admission, so that anyone who wanted to enroll could. There were no set classes, but Eve was there to offer instruction in literature and writing if the children so desired, and Jane, a math major from Barnard, was there for numbers and equations, while Warren offered assistance with social studies and history. The kids determined what they did each day, and if what they wanted was to read the funny pages, fine. They’d read the funny pages. Eventually, some of them would get bored and ask one of the adults to teach them something. More and more frequently the children asked her to help them make “story books.” She would ask them questions about their lives and write down whatever they told her. Then she would give them the pages so they could illustrate them as she hovered nearby, in case they needed reminding of what was written on each page. Later she would read their stories aloud during circle time. Three of her kids who hadn’t known their letters when they first enrolled at The Children’s Place could now read.
• • •
One early December afternoon Eve arrived home from teaching exhausted. The kids had decided to have a naked day, which was always tedious because it meant sorting all of the clothes they tossed on the floor and making certain they didn’t run outside to dance in the snow. For starters, she didn’t want them to catch a cold, but also, she had to be careful not to do anything that would attract the attention of the authorities, who might come barging into the school demanding licenses and other bureaucratic bullshit. Walking into the apartment she shared with Warren and a rotating parade of others, she went to the kitchen sink, overflowing with dirty dishes, and got herself a glass of water. Then she went to the living room, pushed the sleeping bag off the sofa (some guy who’d gone AWOL from basic training was staying with them for a few days), and pulled her stash out from the rosewood box that sat on the coffee table. Last year she had bare-knuckled her way through quitting tobacco, but pot was a different story. With great care, she rolled herself a well-deserved joint. Just as she was bringing a match to its tip, the phone rang. She ignored it, lit the joint, and inhaled. The phone rang five times, stopped, and then a minute later started up again. She sighed, answered.
It was her mother. “Eve, I have some bad news. Mother has died,” she said. “A sudden heart attack. She was absolutely fine yesterday and now—gone.”
“Oh no,” said Eve. “I’m so sorry.” How could Grandmommy no longer be alive? It seemed impossible that such a formidable person could have succumbed to something so ordinary as death.
“How soon can you get home?”
“Oh, Mommy, I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it. I’ve got a class of twenty kids that need me up here. But I’ll be with you in spirit, I promise.”
“God dammit, Eve, if you don’t come to this funeral I will see to it that your father never sends you another check again. I swear I will.”
She had never heard her mother curse. She brought the joint to her mouth, thinking. The last thing she wanted was to return to Atlanta, even to bury Grandmommy. It was just too hard, too disorienting. It was like being the guest of some hausfrau during World War II, being fed schnitzel while you knew that, a few miles away, innocents were being gassed. But without her parents’ money she could not do her work at the school. She could not do her work to end imperialism. As embarrassing as it was to rely on their largesse, in an exploitive, capitalist system what other option did she have?
“Warren’s coming with me,” she said. “We’ll need two tickets from JFK. Nonstop.”
• • •
They had gotten high just before boarding their flight. As their plane started its final descent into Atlanta, they raced up and down the aisles grabbing drinks off people’s trays, like crazed stewardesses. Indeed, passengers must have mistaken them for overly zealous employees of the airline, for no one said a word to them about their crazy-motherfucker actions, even though their actions were intentional, political: White Bread America went along with all sorts of atrocities, from Jim Crow in the South to the war in East Asia. Acting like crazy motherfuckers was a form of resistance.
They walked off the plane, attracting only a few glances. Eve’s father was waiting for them at the gate. It had been a long time since Eve had seen him. He looked older, heavier, the bags under his eyes prominent.
“What happened to your hair?” he asked as he took her duffel bag from her.
She had cut it short, as short as Jean Seberg in Breathless, only she was not trying to be chic but rather utilitarian.
“It’s easier,” she said. “No fuss, no muss. Saves on shampoo, too. This is Warren.”
This was her father’s first time to meet—not her boyfriend exactly; they weren’t exclusive—her lover. She wondered how Warren would appear to her if she were meeting him for the first time. Her father probably assumed he was a hippie, but he resembled a hippie only in that his hair was a little long. Otherwise he looked like a manual laborer in his uniform of jeans, work boots, and flannel shirt, a small SDS button pinned to it.
Warren held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, sir,” he said.
“The pleasure is mine,” said Eve’s father, shaking Warren’s hand heartily.
Eve gave Warren a hard stare. Sir?
Once at the car, Eve insisted that Warren take the front seat while she rode in the back. It would be easier to avoid being questioned by her father that way, should he want to hit her with some version of “What exactly are you doing with your life?” Of course, he might interrogate Warren, but she doubted he would. Her father was known as a “consummate gentleman.” In his study was a framed quote by Theodore Roosevelt: “Courtesy is as much the mark of a gentleman as courage.” They zipped up I-75, the interstate so empty it almost seemed as if they were driving through a ghost town. As they drove, her father told them there would be a viewing that night at Patterson Funeral Home and then the service itself would be at All Saints’ the following afternoon at 1:00 p.m.
“Your mother asked that I suggest you shave your legs,” said Eve’s father. “But I believe I’ll leave that between you and your God.”
“My god doesn’t give a shit about hairy legs,” she said.
“Hmm,” murmured her father. “Well, I guess that settles that.”
• • •
How could it feel both so good and so awful to be back home? Her mother had freaked out about her hair, of course, actually shrieking when she first saw it. But she pulled herself together pretty quickly, probably helped by the fact that Warren was, inexplicably, acting like an Upstanding Young Man. In addition to calling her father “sir,” he referred to her mother as “ma’am” and even pulled the chair out for her when they sat down at the kitchen table for a very early supper of hamburger soup and biscuits. (Was Warren just fucking with them? Was he hoping to get something out of her dad, money maybe?)
Casual though the meal was, her mother still put out silver flatware, not her ornate pattern, but the Fairfax, whose simple design paired well with the simple food. The weight of the sterling soup spoon felt good in her hand. She hated that it felt good in her hand. She hated that earlier, after unpacking, she had stood underneath the showerhead in her childhood bathroom for thirty minutes, just luxuriating in the hot water. At their New York walk-up they never got hot water for more than five minutes, and never with so much pressure.
Her mother had hung a robe for her on a hook on the bathroom door, and she had set out lotions and cotton balls and nail scissors, along with a new razor blade and shaving cream. She was anything but subtle. God forbid Eve embarrass her mother with unshaved legs at Grandmommy’s funeral. God forbid her mother give serious thought to anything other than how things appeared.
• • •
They gathered in the vestibule before heading for the viewing. Eve did not know Warren owned one, but there he was in dark suit and even a tie. When she asked about it, he told her it was left over from his boarding school days. Fig and Charlie, the very newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Charlie Whalen, arrived at the house, even though their Garden Hills starter home was closer to Patterson’s than The Compound.
“Sister!” Fig said the moment she saw Eve, arms outstretched to embrace her. Fig wore a little black-and-white tweed suit. Her hairstyle was not dissimilar to how Eve used to wear hers, back in the days when she had added height with a teasing comb and lots of hairspray and then curled the ends so they flipped out. Now she didn’t even have enough hair to fit around the rod of a curling iron. Eve wore a black turtleneck and a long black skirt, her feet tucked into a pair of clogs, an old pea coat, bought cheap from the army surplus store, draped over her arm—the same coat she had worn to countless demonstrations against the war.
“Hi, Fig,” she said, hoping her sister-in-law’s embrace wouldn’t last too long.
“Oh, it’s so good to see you!” exclaimed Fig. “And I love your darling haircut. It looks like Mia Farrow’s in Rosemary’s Baby. Did you see that movie? I had nightmares for weeks!”
“Nothing that happened in that movie is worse than what’s going on right now in Vietnam,” said Eve.
Fig stared at her for a moment. Then she blinked, linked her arm through Eve’s, and whispered, “You might just be right.”
• • •
At the viewing Eve spent a long time looking at Grandmommy’s waxy face, her rouge applied in two round circles on her cheeks. She had always been so careful to look put together, elegant. Eve felt a shiver and put on her coat, grateful that she had thought to bring it with her.
Grandmommy was being buried in a pleated pink silk dress, with a small cream-colored Bible—just the New Testament—in her manicured hands and her Fleur pin attached to the dress slightly above her bosom, close to her heart. Eve wondered if Grandmommy’s belief system would soon be buried, too, if the old world had to die before a new one could burst forth into being. She thought of how her grandmother used to invite her over to her “cottage” for tea parties when she was a little girl, how she would serve Earl Grey from a sterling pot, and then dilute the black tea with lots of milk and sugar for Eve. She would serve petits fours from Henri’s bakery, too. Eve used to love those cakes. She remembered how her grandmother would sometimes even have an extra cake for Eve’s cherished doll, Annabelle, and how she and her grandmother would secretly nibble at it and then praise Annabelle for eating her confection all up. She felt tears well in her eyes. She couldn’t believe her grandmother was no longer on this earth.
And yet it was time for the old woman to go! It was time for the world she lived in, the things she believed in, to be rendered to dust.
Wiping away her tears, Eve left the coffin to look for Warren. He was standing with Charlie. She wondered what in the name of God they might be talking about. The war, probably, as Warren didn’t speak of much else. Her brother was almost a head taller, but he looked gangly and almost goofy next to Warren with his simmering intensity. She walked over to them. They were discussing Hank Aaron and the Braves. Eve could care less about sports. She found herself tuning out until she realized Charlie was talking to her.
“Sorry?”
“Fig and I saw your old friend from college a few months ago. We ran into her at Moe’s and Joe’s. Dani something?”
“Daniella. She mentioned running into y’all when I saw her in New York. She’s in her third year at Emory Law, you know.”
Even though Charlie had been the one to pull Eve into the conversation, he looked past her while she spoke, scanning the crowd, a habit that had always driven her crazy.
“Help me out with something,” said Charlie, making brief eye contact with her before continuing to scan for people more important to talk to. “Why, exactly, is she in law school?”
“Um, so she can be a lawyer?”
“Sure, but how is that going to work? I mean, I suppose she could be an associate at a firm for a few years, but what happens when she wants to start having babies?”
“Are you kidding? Mom could have had a full-time job for all the time she spent with us when we were little. Daniella will just hire someone like Ada to take care of her kids—if she has them at all.”
“I just don’t see it,” said Charlie, looking at Warren, as if he might offer confirmation. “I don’t see how a woman could put in the hours needed to be a really successful lawyer.”
“I told you, she’d hire someone like Ada.”
“Ada might have helped out when we were little, but when we were sick, Mom was there.”
She thought of the chicken and rice soup her mother made every time either she or Charlie had a bad cold.
“Chuck’s got a point,” said Warren. “I mean, isn’t becoming a mother sort of the pinnacle of a woman’s life? Is Daniella really going to skip out on that? Isn’t her Young Republican husband going to want a brood of rug rats all his own?”
Warren still referred to Pete as “the Young Republican” even though it had been years since Pete claimed loyalty to the GOP.
“All I’m saying,” Charlie lectured, “is that I think it’s dangerous when we get away from our innate roles. Daniella’s bright, no doubt, but she essentially stole a spot in her class that should have gone to a man who will one day need to provide for his family.”
“You’re a chauvinist pig,” said Eve. She pointed at Warren. “You, too.”
“I would be willing to bet one hundred dollars that she quits five years into whatever job she gets in order to start pushing out babies,” said Charlie.
Warren laughed.
“Hilarious,” muttered Eve, and she walked away from both of them, toward the other side of the crowded room. Several people cast sideways glances at her as she made her way through. These were people she once knew, but she had no intention of talking to any of them. What would she say? “Hi, Mrs. Calhoun! I find your entire way of life offensive!”
She imagined that most people in this room felt the same as Charlie did about women pursuing serious careers, not to mention nearly every man in Daniella’s law class. God, poor Daniella. For a moment she ached for her old friend, who must be under such scrutiny so much of the time. But then she reconsidered. The truth was Daniella probably deserved whatever shit she got. Not because she was “stealing” a spot in her law school class, as Charlie claimed, but because she was of the erroneous belief that she could change the system from within. When it came to the system, the only thing you could “change from within” was yourself. Entering the system would change you. You would acclimate to its norms.
• • •
She saw Fig standing by herself near the guest book, smiling bravely but looking uncomfortable. It was hard to believe Fig was only twenty-six. She looked like a matron. It was her tight hairdo, her fussy little suit.
“Do you need a drink as much as I do?” asked Eve as she sidled up next to her.
“Lord, yes!” said Fig. She glanced at Eve, smiling, but then her expression shifted into something different—confusion and surprise.
“What?” asked Eve. But before Fig could answer, Eve’s mother was storming toward her, her cheeks flushed, her eyes hard.
“I cannot believe you.”
“What?” Eve had no idea what was going on, this sudden onslaught of fury.
Her mother took her pointer finger, the nail painted bright red, and jabbed it into the lapel of Eve’s pea coat. “This,” she said. “You found this an appropriate accessory to wear to Mother’s funeral?”
Eve looked down and saw the button she had pinned to the coat, which said in small print: “Fellatio is fun. Cunnilingus is cool.” Someone had given her the button months ago; she had gotten so used to it being on her lapel that she had forgotten about it.
“I didn’t even realize I was wearing it. It was just left on from a long time ago. Don’t worry, Mother. I bet no one here even knows what those words mean.”
“I know what they mean! Your father knows what they mean! And I promise you everyone else in this room knows exactly what those words mean. They mean: I don’t give a damn about my grandmother. They mean: I don’t give a damn about my family. You just despise us, don’t you, Eve? There is no conclusion other than that. You despise your own family. You want to humiliate us at every turn. Well, congratulations. A-plus!”
“Mommy, I didn’t mean to wear it. I promise. I’m sorry. I’ll take it off. I’ll throw it away.”
“Don’t bother. And you and Warren don’t bother coming back to the house. It was a mistake to ask you to come home.”
Her mother turned and walked away. Eve looked at Fig, whose face was frozen in shock. But then Fig turned to her, put her hand on Eve’s forearm.
“She’s lashing out because she’s grieving,” she said. “Why don’t you come and stay with Charlie and me for the night? The guest bed is all made, and then tomorrow after the service maybe you can go back to your mom’s house and clear things up.”
• • •
She had to admit that Charlie and Fig’s house was adorable, a white cottage with window boxes filled with boxwoods and paperwhites on the first floor and dormer windows popping out of the roof on the second. It reminded her of the house the Anderson family lived in on the TV show Father Knows Best. She wondered when Fig would have a baby, make Charlie a father.
They went inside and Fig led her and Warren to the guest room upstairs, hesitating for just a moment before saying, “There’s a pullout bed in the living room if y’all would rather not share?”
“Fig, we’ve been sharing a bed for years now,” said Eve, and her mind flashed to that first night with Warren, the night she discovered that Daniella planned to go to Mississippi without her. She had gone alone to the West End, where she had hoped to find Warren, where she had lingered at the bar until he showed up. And he did, as if she had conjured him. She thought of how bold she had been, approaching him as soon as he walked in the door, how she had looked him straight in the eye and told him she wanted to go home with him, and how, soon after, they were naked together in his bed. He had plunged right into her, and she had felt a tearing pain. And the pain, somehow, felt good, as if she were ripping herself away from some former self, some naïve, girlish self who believed in loyalty above all.
Fig continued to fuss over things, pulling an extra blanket from a shelf in the closet and putting it at the foot of the bed, checking the medicine cabinet to make sure it contained extra toothbrushes and toothpaste.
Because all of their clothes were at Eve’s parents’ house, Fig dug up some comfy things for them to change into—a pair of sweatpants from Fig’s PE days at college, along with an old Agnes Scott T-shirt. She gave Warren a pair of Charlie’s sweats and one of his old Phi Delt sweatshirts.
“Look at us,” said Eve, twirling in front of Warren. “It’s like we’re in disguise.”
They went into the living room where a Christmas tree stood on display, bejeweled with colored lights. It was a Fraser fir, the same kind Eve’s mother always insisted on, though the elder Mrs. Whalen was of the firm opinion that the tree should not be put up until Christmas Eve. Charlie, his tie removed but dress clothes still on, had lit a fire and was now pouring drinks, Scotch on the rocks for all. Her brother handed her one, and Eve made her way to the sectional sofa, where she sat down with a sigh.
“How about some music?” she asked Charlie.
“What do you want to hear?”
“Do you have any Dylan? Maybe Blonde on Blonde?”
“I’ve got Dylan’s Greatest Hits.”
Of course, Charlie had his Greatest Hits. God, he was so derivative. But never mind. When he put the album on, the opening song was the same as the opener on Blonde on Blonde, “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.”
“Well, they’ll stone you when you’re trying to be so good. . . .”
Ain’t that the truth, Eve thought, remembering her mother jabbing her finger into her chest, infuriated over a tiny button that Eve hadn’t even realized she was wearing, a button that encouraged people to have fun with their bodies.
Warren sat next to her. She was annoyed at him for siding with Charlie at the viewing, but it was still nice to feel his leg against hers. “Do you have a joint?” she asked.
He pulled one from behind his ear, like a magician with a trick hat.
“Where’s Fig?” asked Warren.
“She’ll be here in a minute,” Charlie said. “She’s just putting together something for us to eat.” He settled into the armchair across from them, legs spread wide, drink balanced on his thigh. He looked extremely comfortable inside his own house. He looked like the king of the castle.
“Do you have a light?” asked Eve.
“Sure,” he said, putting his drink down on the floor and walking to the stone fireplace. He pulled a glass ashtray and a Zippo from the mantel, where several silver-framed photographs were on display, including his and Fig’s engagement portrait.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, waving the joint in his direction.
“What is that, marijuana?” asked Charlie.
“Yes, Charlie. It is a marijuana cigarette, and after you smoke it you are going to become both a communist and a practitioner of free love.”
“When did you become such a smartass, Sis?” Charlie asked.
She lit the joint, inhaled. She held the smoke in her lungs for a moment, then pushed it out.
She passed the joint to Warren, who took a hit before reaching across the room to give it to Charlie.
“I can’t,” said Charlie, waving away the offer. “I might run for office one day.”
“He’s adorable, isn’t he?” Eve asked Warren.
Fig, who had changed into black capri pants and a thin gray sweater, walked into the room and set a tray down on the coffee table. On it was a bowl full of saltines next to a white dip with little green flecks in it, along with serving knives and paper napkins.
“Cream cheese and olive,” said Fig. “It’s yummy.”
Eve dipped a knife into the cream cheese mixture and spread it onto a saltine. It was yummy, creamy and smooth with little salty nuggets of olive mixed in.
“Do you want a hit?” Warren asked Fig.
Fig glanced at Charlie.
“You have to ask his permission?” Eve asked.
“No, I just, I wanted to see if Charlie was doing it or not.”
“I’m not, but you go ahead if you want to, sweetheart.”
Fig sat on the sofa next to Eve. Warren handed Fig the joint, reaching over Eve to do so.
“You just put it to your mouth like a cigarette, but hold the smoke in your lungs before exhaling,” said Eve.
Fig took a hit, coughed, and blew the smoke out. “Wow,” she said. “Now I’ve smoked marijuana.”
Warren smiled, amused. He grabbed a saltine and dragged it through the cream cheese and olive.
Fig passed the joint back to Eve, who took a hit and passed it on to Warren.
“This is perfect stoner food,” said Warren.
“Thanks,” said Fig, who had turned to sit sideways on the sofa so that she could face Warren and Eve, her knees pulled into her chest like a young girl. “So what’s it like to live in New York? I’ve only visited once, when I was twelve. We saw the Rockettes and went ice-skating at Rockefeller Center. We had a ball.”
“We pretty much avoid the tourist stuff,” said Eve. “We’re mostly just teaching at the school and organizing against the war in Vietnam.”
“What does ‘organizing’ entail?” asked Charlie.
“We help out guys who have been drafted and can’t, in good conscience, serve. And also guys who are in the Army and want to leave.”
Charlie shook his head, though he didn’t say anything.
“Let me guess,” said Eve. “You disapprove.”
“It just seems like you’re doing the enemy’s job so well that we should fight you instead of the Vietcong,” Charlie said.
“Depends on who you think the enemy is,” said Eve.
Charlie left to go to bed shortly afterward. Eve couldn’t tell if he was upset by their conversation or just genuinely tired, but in any event it was just she, Fig, and Warren left in the living room, passing the joint around, Fig getting more proficient at smoking each time it circled back to her.
At some point Fig took her hair down from its tight little updo and restyled it into a simple ponytail. She was very pretty. Mrs. Whalen had told Eve, with no small amount of pride, that Fig had been on the Homecoming Court when she was a senior at Lovett.
“I admire y’all so much,” Fig proclaimed. “You’re really doing something with your lives. You’re taking a stand. And you’re living in New York! It must be so thrilling to live there, even if you don’t . . . you know . . . tour the sites.”
“I’m sure Charlie could practice law in Manhattan,” suggested Eve.
“He doesn’t want to leave Atlanta. He says the social ‘infrastructure’ here is too compelling, that between y’all’s family history and the Driving Club directory, he’s just one drink away from everyone who matters.”
“That sounds exactly like something my brother would say,” said Eve, standing so that she could retrieve more saltines from the kitchen.
“Fuck Charlie,” said Warren, turning toward Fig so that he was looking directly at her. “What do you want?”
Fig held his gaze for a moment before answering. “Adventure,” she said.
Fig continued staring at Warren, her lips parted slightly. Warren reached over and put his hand on her leg.
“Excitement,” added Fig, twisting a piece of hair that had escaped from her ponytail. “Something different.”
And then Warren moved toward Fig, leaning in so close that his lips were grazing hers. Eve watched from where she stood halfway between the couch and the doorway, frozen, as Warren rested his hand lightly on Fig’s cheek, a move Eve remembered from when they first kissed, a move that was so small, so incidental, and yet felt so proprietary. And now Warren was kissing Fig, while motioning for Eve to come back to the couch to join them. For a moment Eve felt herself pulled toward Warren’s desire.
But then she glanced at the fireplace and caught sight of their engagement portrait on the mantel, its silver frame gleaming. The two of them looked so happy, sitting side by side on a bench by the Duck Pond, near where they now lived. Soon their wedding photos would also be on display, but those probably hadn’t even come back from the photographer yet.
Ah, fuck the system, right? Break every taboo. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t do what Warren wanted. She couldn’t act like a crazy motherfucker when it came to her brother’s wife, even if her brother’s wife was a willing participant.
“I’m exhausted,” she told them. “I’m going to bed.”
Fig looked up at her, her eyes searching and uncertain. “I guess we should all call it a night?” she asked, hesitant.
“You two can do whatever you want,” Eve answered.
Eve walked away, heading for the stairs that would lead to the guest bedroom that Fig had meticulously prepared for them. She turned around once at the doorframe, watched Warren’s hands on Fig’s waist, his fingers encircling her.