“Freaky group, huh?”
Caroline smiled.
“Melinda doesn’t respect me because I still fuck men,” she said. Caroline nodded. So Mel was Melinda. She already hated the name Caroline. She made a promise that the next time she had to come up with a new name, she would choose one that had a man’s name for a nickname.
“But she’s trying to free herself of all the disempowering stuff that gets fed us from day one. I agree, look at the women you see in the movies and on TV. Ask yourself what we are being sold by the establishment.” Caroline nodded but kind of lost interest. She was weary of those words. Empowerment, establishment, military-industrial complex. Male chauvinism, imperialism. Syndicalism. Leftist. Marxist, Maoist. The oppression of all that freighted rhetoric, the ists and isms, made her feel spiritual fatigue. She knew this connected to her current predicament in profound ways, if she cared to examine it, which she didn’t, not yet.
There was an undeniable innocence to her first year underground. Before Caroline’s big screwup (which, really, she should have seen coming), she existed in nunlike simplicity. Her constant fear ordered her life and gave her purpose. Everything pertained to her maintaining her liberty, nothing else applied. Every decision, every waking and sleeping moment was enclosed and ordered by her fugitive status. Sometimes, as she lay in her bed, she considered the possibility of turning herself in. But she knew what happened to other fugitives when they turned themselves in — unless they informed on their colleagues, they got long punitive sentences.
Time just went by. She began to think of time as something she had logged in since the event, as if that might earn her something. Later she would look at time like scenery outside the window of a train, just a way of noticing what had passed her by, or what she had passed by. Another birthday for her sister, or her mother. As time accumulated, she thought less and less of turning herself in — being a fugitive was becoming her identity, the journey turned into the thing itself, the reason for being. In and of itself, her underground life felt like an accomplishment. She was recast, and it grew harder and harder not to continue. Prisoner or fugitive? But couldn’t she perhaps live forever at the margins, and have a good new life? By the summer of her first year underground, she even enjoyed occasional periods of comfort.
She continued to cook for the CR meetings. Vegetarian chili. Rhubarb pies with wheat crusts. Nut loafs and spinach lasagnas. Everyone loved her food. She even became friendly with Mel. Mel believed traditional women’s work needed to be reclaimed for their own purposes. She tried to help Caroline.
“You should quit the cafe and work at the bookstore. We could offer some light food in the back, where the reading tables are. We could start with baked goods and coffee.” Mel pushed her glasses up. She held herself stiffly. She didn’t wear a bra, but her sweatshirts concealed her breasts anyway. And when Berry flounced around falling out of her shirt, it was obvious that Mel found it all a bit too voluptuous. This annoyed Caroline; she sensed it was something complex and unfair in Mel.
“I think Berry is lovely,” Caroline said to Mel one day as they sat on the couch and ate chili. There was a lounge area upstairs from the bookstore, and they often had the CR meetings there. Caroline didn’t know why she said it, except Berry was finger-combing her hair absently and she did look lovely. Berry always seemed to be touching herself, and it made her appear suggestive and sybaritic. But it wasn’t for show, it wasn’t a display. It was just her, and the way she felt free to enjoy the thousand tiny soft delights of her own body.
“She’s a slob. She has this flower child gluttony about her. It’s a waste of energy,” Mel said without hesitating. “You get the sense that she wants the easy way out of everything.”
“That’s a pretty shallow extrapolation. Do tough people have to look tough?”
Mel fixed her eyes on Caroline. “If you look tough, you get treated a certain way and it helps you become what you want to be.”
“You want to be tough?”
“Hard, in fact. Immune to the whims of the body. And what weaknesses I have are my own business.” Mel turned away, and Caroline knew the conversation was over. Mel had such certainty. But she didn’t rant, she didn’t bluster. Caroline admired that. Mel somehow escaped being smug because she didn’t say more than she had to. Rants always make it seem as though the person ranting is desperately trying to convince himself of something. Or maybe the ranter becomes so interested in the rhetoric of what he is saying that convincing is beside the point. It is just about language and pattern and repetition. And the rush of words and adrenaline as it all spills out, exhausting any opposition with an overload of words. Mel was not evangelical in this manner.
Strange Caroline felt this way now. Bobby, after all, made ranting such an art. Whole days could go by and she wouldn’t think of him. Already.
Less and Less
CAROLINE AND Berry ate dinner at Caroline’s small table and watched the president give a speech. Again, Caroline noticed the sweat on his upper lip. It was hard to listen to him. He spoke about himself in the third person and described the “rather rough assaults” the president must suffer. He stood at the lectern with a peculiar, forced smile on his face. It was very specific, this expression of resentment and humiliation. What was it? Caroline shook her head. It was vulnerability. The bastard. He was melting before their eyes, and it was a lousy thing to watch. Berry ignored the TV. Animated bubbles advertised Dow Bathroom Cleaner. “We work hard so you won’t have to.” Caroline turned it off.
Berry sipped wine from a pottery mug. She described, in detail, her last breakup. Her last sexual fling. Caroline listened and drank her wine and watched Berry wind a piece of blond hair around her finger.
“I don’t know why I do it, sometimes.” Berry pulled her finger from her hair, and the little curl sprang back toward her face.
“I feel like when I don’t want to I’m being uptight or something. You know, we are supposed to be open-minded and loving, right? And not make sex into these power games between men and women but make it equal.”
“But you still feel lousy about it in the morning.”
“I have some hang-ups still.”
“Maybe you just don’t want to have sex every time. Isn’t that allowed?” Caroline said.
“But I do want to, I just think it still means different things and we all pretend it doesn’t.”
Caroline poured what remained of the wine into her mug. Berry lit up a joint pinched in a roach clip and took a drag.
“Maybe I should just become a lesbian. Like Mel.” Berry offered the smoke to Caroline. Caroline took a hit and exhaled slowly. She thought it risky, but then it was okay. Time between sentences elongated and expanded. She felt good, all in one place for a moment.
“Is that really how it works, you just decide?”
Berry started to giggle. Caroline found this funny too, and she laughed. It was strange to hear herself laugh.
“Can’t you tell that Mel has the hots for me?” Berry said, still laughing.
“Yeah, I noticed. You’ve got her wrapped around your little finger.” Caroline snorted into her hand, then coughed, laughing. “Everyone wants you, Berry.”
“Of course they do.” And Berry thrust her breasts out a bit and made mock bedroom eyes. Caroline opened another bottle of wine. Berry scrounged in Caroline’s purse for some cigarettes. She pulled out one broken Parliament. “You should lose the purse,” Berry said. “Let go of all the stuff you lug around everywhere. Do you really need it?”