Emma Who Saved My Life (30 page)

“I know, I know—that'da made things a lot simpler for poor Connie, huh? I'd have
killed
to live back then. Oh Gil, you tool a man around for a month, you get a necklace; a year, opera tickets and great dinner; two years, a flat—and for what? Putting out for a Frenchman. Now
that
was what I call a deal. Connie's on Wall Street, she knows a good deal when she hears one. Of course, today, sex with men is
out,
a good feminist is a lesbian these days, if you read what the leaders say.”

I wonder what Janet and Connie would say to each other. Would there be bloodshed? Would they understand each other?

“Most feminists who take this hard-line, political lesbianism stuff couldn't get laid if they had to,” Connie continued.

Bloodshed.

“All the things women traditionally are good at, have done for centuries—courtesans, mothers, raising the children, high priestesses, you name it—that's out now. The object is to go out into the business world and be as shallow and stupid and conniving and empty as your male counterpart, dress like a nun, sue the company for fifty million if someone pinches your behind at the water cooler, no sex, no femaleness, no fun.” She sighed. “I hate all the actors now,” she said, changing tacks.

WHAT?

Connie smiled, blushed a little for letting her thought slip out like that. “No, no, not you, I mean film actors. All the sensitive and caring and sharing and supportive men of the '70s, men who cry, men who share in the child rearing, men who give up their careers for their wives' careers. No thank you. I don't like that at all.” She pointed her fork at me, raising an eyebrow. “I don't trust it. I don't believe it. When men stop acting like bastards something's up. I can deal with a man acting like a typical man, I can outthink him, predict him. I can't deal with the Mr. Sensitives, the '70s househusbands on
Donahue
—no way. And I'm so sick of gay men in this town, give me a break from that too.”

Lot of gays in the theater, I say, not exactly making headlines 'round the world with that observation.

“Yeah well, put 'em all in one place so they can meet each other and not get Connie all hot and bothered for nothing. I hate the '70s.” She took a sip of wine, then sneered: “No style, no class, no flair. This city's idea of a good time is dressing up in polyester and dancing to noise.
This,
supposedly, qualifies as fashion.”

Yeah, but the decade's been pretty peaceful. As someone who missed being eligible for Vietnam, let me tell you how much I appreciate that.

“Carter,” she went on, rolling her eyes. “President Jimmy Carter—what a joke. That guy's gonna let the Shah fall because that one-term governor from white-trash land, that
peanut farmer
has had it occur to him that some people in the world aren't very nice sometimes.”

Could be worse, I said. Governor Reagan, Moral Majority in tow, is waiting in the wings.

“Whadya mean
worse?
Worse than Carter addressing the nation in his jeans and sweaters? Worse than Rosalyn and her expensive-and-still-tacky pantsuits? You know, maybe as a neighbor in the building here, I wouldn't mind him, but as a president?” She smiled at me, sensing we were not aligned politically. But she minced no words: “I voted for Reagan in the primary and I was prepared to hang with Gerald Ford, but Carter getting elected is something I still can't believe. Mencken said the only thing to come out of Georgia worth a damn was Coca-Cola and I think he may have been right.”

A Republican, huh? You know, this was the first time (save for born-again religious farm kids at Southwestern Illinois) that I ever had met someone young
claiming
to be Republican, proud of it, ready to take on all arguments about it.

“Reagan will knock Jimmy back to his Sunday school class come the '80 elections, just you watch.”

Reagan? Mr. B Movies?

“Yeah, Mr. B Movies,” she said, getting up to clear away our plates. “He's the most persuasive, slickest packaging of a conservative agenda this century; the interests he represents are going to turn back Johnson's Great Society bullshit. But I don't want to talk politics, please.” She took my plate.

Emma, my friend Emma, I mentioned, had a theory that Reagan was the Antichrist.

“I'm not much on Christs or Antichrists, but if he's going to cut my taxes, pour tons into the military-industrial complex and whip the economy into shape, I'll vote for him. I would sleep with Milton Friedman, so there. You mention your friend Emma a lot.”

Didn't mean to, I said.

“Where does she work? What does she do?”

She wants to be a poet. She works for temp agencies, odd jobs.

“Has she published? Does she have an agent?”

No.

“Is she any good?”

I think so, but she's a bit shy with her stuff.

Connie put the dishes in the sink, muttering, “No one ever got anywhere being that. Shy, I mean.”

No, I guess not.

Connie ran some water in the sink. In a moment she came back to the table with two brandy glasses. “C
eme caramelles in a second. A little pre-dessert brandy?”

Sure. Pile it on, I can get used to living like this.

“This Emma,” she said as she poured, “she's someone you're involved with at the moment?”

(Hmm, not wasting any time, is she?) Uh, well, I said, she was my roommate last year.

“So you've broken up?”

Why am I lying? Why am I trying to make Connie think Emma and I had an affair? That's a dumb question: for sexual credit, of course. But what I want to tell Connie is that I'm wildly attracted to her but that my social life to date has defeated me and I'm scared to make a move. Maybe if I hadn't met Emma—no, forget Emma, she has nothing to do with this evening.

“She was always rude to me on the phone, this Emma girl. Got the impression that she resented my being your friend.” Connie resumed her place, after placing the c
eme caramelles before us.

Yes, I told her, Emma did resent her.

Connie continued eating, a trace of a smile between bites. “Whatever for? Could it be…”

Yes?

“Just a thought.”

Silence for a minute—a minute in which I knew what she meant and she knew that I knew what she meant.

“Let's go in the living room,” she said, rising.

I sat down on the plush sofa. She sat beside me, an inch away.

“Something wrong?” she asked, nestling in.

No, why do you ask?

“Oh it's just you seemed to jump a bit—the body language is all wrong, kid. Nervous about something?”

No, I said, nothing at all. (Calm down, I told myself, get realistic here …)

“What kind of music do you like?”

I told her I liked anything, that I would like to know what
she
liked, actually. She got up and slapped in a tape cassette of some classical piano music, very tinkly and romantic … no wait, here comes an orchestra, so that makes this a … a symphony? No, no, what's the word—Emma knew about classical music, why didn't anything rub off? Sonata. That's it. Nice sonata, I said.

Connie smiled, “It's a concerto actually—”

SHIT. CONCERTO, that's what I meant …

“I made this tape myself,” she went on, leaning into me, a pressure ever so slight. I adjusted myself so I could be more leaned against. “It's sort of a favorites tape, I got five slow movements from Romantic piano concertos and put them back to back—this is Rachmaninoff's First, Chopin's First is next, then Brahms's Second—it took me ages to follow it, and now it's my favorite. Beethoven's Third and, the killer, Ravel's slow movement. I die every time I hear that one. I used to have a lover who put that on and I think of him everytime I hear it … You must have music like that.”

Gee, what to say … Like, there's this Elton John song I slow-danced to with Karen Schmitt at the high-school prom but that wasn't going to cut it beside Chopin. Quick, what classical music did I know? William Tell Overture. Beethoven's duh-duh-duh-DUH Fifth Symphony. Flight of the Bumblebee. Yeah, that's it, I always think of my old lovers when I hear the Flight of the Bumblebee. I'm hopeless. I said there was lots of reminiscent music for me too, but I couldn't think of anything that really got to me.

“Mid-period Beatles slays me too,” she said. “I can't even put them on anymore, nostalgia overwhelms me. I'm back at my high-school prom with Davie Epstein, in Brookline, Massachusetts. I'd gotten my Harvard acceptance and he was going to stay in Brookline and work in his Dad's real-estate office. Oh god.”

Why didn't I say what I had to say about Karen Schmitt? Connie wasn't a snob, she wouldn't have sneered at me for not knowing classical music. She's sharing her thoughts with me and I'm being
worthless
here … I said that I envied her having specific memories like she had to the Beatles. The Beatles for me broke up when I was in tenth grade which doesn't mean I didn't remember them but they were my older brother's property, if you see what I mean.

“All that seems a long time ago,” she said blankly.

Were you a campus protester?

“You kidding?” Connie smiled, and laughed a little, knocking her hair back. “Miss Reactionary here? I thought the governor shoulda turned the teargas on 'em, Ronnie Reagan-like.”

We both laughed because she was obviously joking. At least, I think she was joking. Maybe she wasn't.

“Ever been in a demonstration, Gil? I have. It's just a mob enjoying itself. ‘Let's go take the administration building!' And everyone goes yeahhhhh and then everyone runs to see how far they can get—it's a blast. I got caught in the one at Columbia when I was down here seeing my boyfriend. No one's honest enough to admit they were fun—they were all the most serious business in the world, all of them meaningful and pure, not a trace of levity, just a holy purpose. If you've ever been in one you know how it's just a mob getting out of hand, getting off on itself.”

Yeah but they were protesting the Vietnam War which was worth making a little noise about, tearing up a little property over. If she had been a guy she would have had to go fight—

“College deferment.”

Didn't she find that a little hypocritical?

“I'm just a realist, Gil. I'm not saying college deferment was fair, it wasn't. Lower-class whites and blacks fought Vietnam because they went to crummy schools, couldn't get into college given their environments. But that's how life's always worked. But we're talking politics again.”

Yes, but I was learning a lot talking politics with her because it was becoming obvious I was falling for a very civilized Fascist. Hey, I'm thinking to myself, maybe Emma is right, you aren't this kind of person—you're not her class, you're not her type. What kind of future is remotely possible here? None. What's worse is that I don't have enough sophistication to argue with her, she would win every argument even though I was right. Nah, this is doomed. Maybe I should just get up and tell her I'll call again and just go away. There, I felt better already, the burden of having to sleep with her is off my shoulders and other parts of my body. I can relax. I can walk out of here a free man—

“I think you should stay here tonight,” she said, putting a hand on my leg. “What do you say?”

I say nothing.

“You've been nervous all night, kid. If you were sitting over there worried about making a move or whether you should or not, or whether I liked you or … or whatever you were thinking, I think you should know it's all right…”

What was I going to say? Guess I'll know when I hear myself say it.

“… and from the moment when I came backstage to see you after the play, I think I knew where I wanted to take this relationship…”

It was like in those out-of-body experiences, where you look down and see yourself. I wished I was out of my particular body, come to think of it. I was just SO not ready for this.