When they were done eating, Guy took out a Pentax to photograph the shimmering Jell-O desserts; trembling, translucent parfaits buried under pompadours of Reddi-wip, ignoring the mild objections of the manager, who was not used to seeing his food paid such close and permanent attention, who perhaps thought Guy was an inspector. Of some sort.
On August 21, 1971, George Jackson, celebrated convict author of Soledad Brother, was killed in a supposed “escape attempt” at San Quentin, a death that helped ice the mood in Berkeley and among the Left in general. It was into this climate of frigid and bitter suspicion, paranoia, and anger that Susan and Jeff relocated from L.A. in early September, spending some chaotic time in Guy and Randi Mock’s Oakland apartment, a period that Susan recalled with cancerous distaste. Guy and Jeff would sit around drinking beer and talking, occasionally in the company of another of Guy’s proselytes, stacking empty cans of Coors and Olympia until they stretched toward the ceiling, and when it became patently obvious that Susan had no intention of feeding them, the proselyte would leave or the pair or three of them would rise and shuffle irritably out the door, leaving her with their mess. She was so mad at Jeff that by the time they found their own apartment she was ready to throw him out of it.
And here’s Uncle Jerry again, a fresh drink in his hand.
“Nancy, I don’t know what’s worse. Your crass vulgarity or your stupid mixed metaphors.”
“Oh, Jerry!” Aunt Nancy pretends to laugh.
Jerry takes Susan by the elbow.
“So what are you doing up there in San Fran? There’s talk, you know. I happened to miss the notorious newscast, but you can believe me that plenty of people were more than happy to fill me in. The general picture that seems to be emerging is of you waving a gun around and laying an eternal curse on the powers that be.”
He rattles the cubes.
“Oh, I didn’t.”
“Well, I thought certain of my informants may have taken license.”
“What it was, I was very upset about a friend of mine who got killed.”
“The Atwood girl. General Gelina. I heard.”
The audition was for a role in Hedda Gabler. The place was like an oven. Susan wanted to ask someone to open a window, or a door, but figured that’d be just the thing to scotch the audition for her. She was mad because she’d had a quarrel with a woman in the small faltering dramatic reading group she’d formed. Why — the untalented but aggressively well-read woman had wanted to know — did Susan want to try out for a role in that sexist play about an unresponsive and frigid bitch, a play that clearly was the neurotic old Norwegian’s castration fantasy? Sure, the character was a strong woman, quote unquote, but depicted in all the ways that reassure male chauvinist pigs that a woman’s strength is a manifestation of psychosis and, above all, ultimately enfeebling sexual dysfunction. Why, Susan? Aren’t you aware, Susan? Et cetera. Susan wrapped her arms around herself in the sticky heat of the small theater. All the other actors and actresses seemed to know one another, and they greeted one another with a warm effusiveness that both struck her as phony and made her feel lonely.
There was this girl who sat slouched in a folding chair in such a way that made Susan think, at first, that she was pregnant. Something about the way her interlaced hands lay on her belly, the way she had positioned her feet on the floor. Their eyes met, and for a moment they gazed at each other. The momentary nature of the gaze abraded the disaffection Susan felt. She wanted to sustain a gaze like that. No reason not to. No reason in the world. She rose from the chair and shuffled over.
“Murder in here, huh?”
“Yeah, you said it. Beats Indiana, though. Like living in a kiln four months out of the year.”
Indiana? The accent was pure Northeast; she guessed Philly or New York. They chatted for a while. New Jersey was the actual answer. And she wasn’t pregnant.
Each auditioned. Susan was only slightly disappointed to discover that her new friend appeared to have little talent. But there was a kind of ineffable presence to her, some essential kernel of femininity that seemed at home on display. When the casting decisions were announced, Susan had scored the plum, Hedda, but Angela Atwood seemed a perfectly natural Thea.
“Neat,” said Angela.
“Yes,” said Susan with relief. “Neat.”
Susan had loved Angela. They’d enjoyed a friendship that was conspiratorial, flirtatious, confidential, inspirational, competitive, and tinted with the kind of maturity that presaged the open hopefulness that Susan thought should define her adult life. Until Angela abruptly went underground, she and Susan rang all the changes together.
It was Hedda who handled the guns in the play.
For a while they’d labored together, cocktail-waitressing at a den for Financial District pashas. Strictly grab-ass and glazed eyes studying your mandatory décolletage. The job was all about tits, finally, completely unfunny jokes about rising moons, full moons, ever land a man on those moons?; about Just lean on over and squeeze some fresh into my drink, about I see you’re having a double too, about Gimme some milk but hey, I’ll just drink it right out of the container. Hard to believe that these paragons of establishment success contrived to devote inordinately large portions of their theoretically spare leisure time to inebriation and the brutally undisguised admiration of the suggestively draped bumps on their chests. Susan’s weren’t even especially big. She and Angela could bore even hard-core feminists silly sitting there enumerating a day’s random humiliations; it would be suggested that they just quit, but that seemed, they thought, to miss the point.
Instead they organized, trying to interest their coworkers in a union. The unanimous indifference was dismal enough to prompt them to take the advice and quit. Angela proposed a “dramatic reading” of the five-page parting letter they cowrote to denounce their working conditions, their employers, and the apathy of their coworkers. They’d never really had their audience, though. Instead of upsetting people, making them flinch, they’d just provided them with another funny little Guess What Happened Today. Before they left, Angela had turned around and shouted something odd: “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the People!” Susan thought it sounded familiar though it wasn’t until after Angela had vanished into the underground that she remembered first hearing it after Marcus Foster had been shot; this “Symbionese” group had incorporated it into a communique justifying the November attack, which had killed Foster and wounded his deputy, Robert Blackburn. It also said, “Let the voice of their guns express the words of freedom,” a line Hedda Gabler might have delivered had Ibsen not restrained her.