Emma Who Saved My Life (5 page)

Offended Superliberal: “What?!”

“You don't think Gerald Ford is going to be the laugh riot Dick Nixon was, do you? Oh the Golden Days of Presidential Entertainment are slipping away.”

The first Someone: “And I suppose you think the Cambodians were entertained by his secret bombings?”

“I knew about 'em. You knew about 'em. The Cambodians knew about 'em.”

Flustered: “It was a neutral country.”

“With 40,000 Vietcong troops operating out of it, supplying their front lines.”

Outraged: “What did that have to do with the innocent women and children whose villages we bombed?”

“Not much, but it had a lot to do with the innocent nineteen-year-old soldiers from Podunk, USA, who were being shot up by those weapons in South Vietnam. Given that we were fighting the war, what was wrong with defending our soldiers? We should have waited for Cambodia to stand up and go: hey guys we're not really neutral so you can bomb us now? Come on.”

I drifted back and forth to the refreshment table—as predicted, full of mucks and pastes and goos and natural overripe brown cubes of vegetables on toothpicks to stick in the mucks and pastes and goos, and lots of slivers of bread with no yeast, salt or flavor, next to bowls of seeds and kernels and bran dust. Emma's voice rang out against the general din, as I noticed from time to time …

“You know, Susan, the antiabortion movement began on the left, for your information. Fetus rights were on many liberal agenda with antiwar, gay rights and socialism—in fact, I have a handicapped friend who feels like abortion will eventually rid the world of all human imperfection, as people will abort a fetus with any deformity or undesired characteristic, and he takes the line that abortion morality will do away with handicapped people altogether, denying humanity its variety, undermining the premise that a handicapped person can have a worthwhile existence. He saw a future where people breed for perfection like the Nazis, the whole eugenics lie…”

That got a few people going. She struck next in this pocket of people hanging on the words of a bearded Columbia professor-type:

“I'm actually looking forward to nuclear war, in a strange way,” Emma said. “I mean, for one thing, the suspense is killing me—a car backfires in the street at three a.m. and in my semi-awake state I think: god, they've gone and done it. Secondly, if it were a limited exchange, or say, if India and Pakistan have a holy war and do each other in, it might do some good—”

Squeaky man: “What do you mean by some good?”

“Well, the population problem would certainly seem less threatening. And the effect would be so devastating that there might very well be in the aftermath a world disarmament; in order to recover from the collective effects of the war, the world would have to unite, work together, under one provisional government perhaps. Why I can envision a new postnuclear ethic and morality and order, a restructuring of society.”

“You must be kidding” said Susan, drifting over.

“Not at all. I also intend on surviving this limited Soviet-American exchange.”

Someone broke in: “It wouldn't be worth living after a nuclear war. The radiation, the culture ruined, civilization gone, all your family burned to a crisp.”

“Except for the radiation, all that sounds fine to me,” said Emma. “And the radiation is going to go away, and you can stockpile food, canned goods, Cheese Whiz, Captain Crunch, all the staples. I envision coming out of the shelter in Maine or Oregon and getting on a motorcycle and driving around seeing what's left of everything. I see a whole neo-Romanticism growing out of the desolation, the ruins, the scavengers, the omnipresence of death. I envision doing the country with a band of my friends, weapons in hand for protection against the radiation-mad mutated humans who pursue us for our food, or perhaps to eat us—it'll be like a science-fiction movie …

And she never let up, until everyone was yelling and screaming at her. I wandered back to the drinks table. In the background I heard Emma say: “And what's so bad about genetic mutation? We'd all be chimpanzees without it…”

Lisa bumped into me, steadying herself on my arm. “I'm officially drunk Gil baby,” she said. “This is my life now: coffee all morning, cappuccino and iced tea all afternoon, a caffeine high with a vengeance. Then”—Lisa used her hands in grand gestures that seemed to have little to do with what she was saying—“then at night, booze. The body is ready for drink, ready to come down. You giveth the body adrenaline and then you taketh it away…” Lisa had trouble with the
th
s on giveth and taketh.

I said Emma was in danger of being lynched by the party.

“What's great,” said Lisa, “is that Emma really does
mean
these things. Everyone wakes up the next day and laughs, thinking she's kidding. She's not. Oh look. Look.”

What?

“She's talking to Joan now. They got in this horrific fight two weeks ago over native Americans.”

Native Americans?

“You know, Indians. Woo woo woo woo…”

Joan was in sandals, jeans, and a homemade knit blouse that she had made herself (as she was happy to tell everyone), and she sold her homemade handicrafts in order to buy the materials for a loom that she was going to make herself to produce crafts upon as it was the only moral alternative to buying textiles from un-unionized factories down in North Carolina where there was Fascist union-busting and the loom was very important to her, as was her homemade knitwear business; i.e., her smock, which was the color of dirty, tawny, offwhite wool and had no sleeves but rather two big gaping holes at the shoulder and every time she gestured or got a drink or got a piece of flavorless brown bread, you couldn't help seeing her pointy small breasts when she bent forward. But then she seemed like she might not mind your seeing her pointy small breasts. I told Lisa that I couldn't help noticing her pointy small breasts.

“Yes,” said Lisa seriously, “they're always pointy and sticking through her crocheted tops. Joan once gave me a speech on how dishonest I was because I shaved my underarms. Joan is that woman's roommate…” Lisa pointed her drink toward a brunette version of Joan, who had long dark hair as if she might think she looked like an Indian—wait: native American—with a leather headband (HOW unfashionable …) pulling her hair back, but from the neck down she was dressed like an almost-stylish secretary in a “midi” with white hose that looked strange between the midi and the leather boots.

“Sally's a classic,” said Lisa, pulling me further back from the party so we could gossip. “Last month she had two analysts. Two. She had so many problems, you see, she went to one on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the other on Monday and Wednesdays. On weekends she went out and did self-destructive, stupid things to talk about Monday through Thursday.”

Lisa was rehearsing her stand-up comedy routine, right?

“No, I couldn't make this story up,” she went on, steadying herself on my arm. I led us both to a sofa that someone had spilled a drink on and therefore was deserted. “All her problems in life are because of Daddy,” said Lisa. “Daddy who pays the rent on her $400 a month loft apartment I'd kill for, Daddy who pays her analysts' bills, Daddy who is a wealthy real-estate tycoon who sends her to Europe once a summer—”

Sounds like child abuse to me too, I said.

“Well Daddy,” Lisa continued, “is the source of all her neuroses and when the Unification Church didn't help and the People's Love Temple didn't help and a retreat with the Mormons didn't help, she went to this high-priced analyst and told him about her daddy who raped her, abused her, and fondled her as a child and why this has caused her to be frigid with men today. Well the doctor came up with a therapy: sue Daddy. Take him to court, exorcise those demons, expose him for what he is, a public catharsis.”

And she did?

Lisa smiled, “There was a problem,” she continued, raising a finger. “Mainly that she made it all up. So she started going to Analyst No. 2 and told him about telling Analyst No. 1 the rape story. He asked her why she made it up, and she said that it was because Analyst No. 1 had made a pass at her and had molested her during a Valium treatment and she was so scared of him that in order to assert how vulnerable and fragile she was she created the whole father-rape story. It gets good here. Analyst No. 2 is outraged that Analyst No. 1 did these things and tells Sally that she should sue him, get his license revoked, expose him for the quack he is—it's analysts like that who give analysts a bad name, right? And so he was going to take this up with the New York Psychiatric Board.”

She made up the second story as well?

“Yes, so she's in a bit of a spot. Now I can't remember what comes first here, the affair with Analyst No. 3, who I think I saw here at this party, or her botched suicide attempt—”

Suicide attempt?

“Yeah, she took too many pills, unfortunately. I mean, unfortunately because so many people want her loft. Anyway, Joan moved in with her and the details are foggy. It's been a long time since she told me all this stuff.”

She TOLD Lisa all this?

“Honey, she'll tell
you
all this; any acquaintance, the mailman, for christ's sake. I was young and innocent, a scant
two
months ago. They warned me don't go out with Sally for lunch, you'll be sorry. But her daddy has an account with Four Seasons, and I was never going to get in the
door
there—so I went.”

Susan had dropped a sandwich of cress and refried beans and curried mayonnaise down her front, making a big stain on the Chinese dragon. So she made a big show of undressing and warning no one to come in because she would be NUDE and then she took minutes choosing something to wear, once peeking around the door and titillating us with a bare arm (“I can't decide what to wear! Joan come here … help me decide. No, come on … Tony, you, yes come here. What should I put on?”), and then after Tony went in to look through her wardrobe, she pulled the door closed yelling “Ahahahaha, I'm going to
convert
you!” I only relate this because now Susan was back in a bathrobe/evening jacket/smock-thing, sweeping through the room commanding silence, silence.

“It's time! It's time!” she cried.

Tony followed her, wheeling out a small black-and-white TV on a cart behind her. Much confusion as they hunted for a plug, and tried to tune it.

“Thank god,” said Lisa, still next to me on the sofa. “I am down to three cigarettes. Now watch the bastard
not
resign. I'll impeach him myself.”

“I mean I NEVER watch TV,” said Susan defensively, “except for PBS and cultural things, of course. News and documentaries—”

“And
General Hospital
every afternoon,” called out Emma, hidden behind a crowd.

Much laughter and finger-pointing; Susan laughed along, breathing drily, “Emma … ha ha ha, what a card.”

The picture stunk. There were lines and snow and static and the sound wasn't good. People talked and didn't pay attention, and when Susan flipped the channel around hoping that would improve reception there was a major outcry to watch the Bogart movie on Channel 9. Finally, the commercials ended, the network news announcer came on, the White House appeared, and there he was: Nixon, looking a good deal older than two years before at his landslide re-election.

Good evening …

Someone: “Jesus Christ, he's gonna do it, isn't he? Can't believe it.”

Someone else: “The man could not wear ties. Look at that awful tie.”

Others: Sssssssshhhh!

This is the thirty-seventh time that I have spoken to you from this office …

Someone: “Thirty-seventh and last.”

I no longer have a strong enough power base in Congress …

Joan: “The bastard, just look at the bastard.”

Sally: “Next time we hear from you, I hope it's from behind bars.”

Whoops were going up around the room. People embracing.

I would have preferred to carry through to the finish, whatever the personal agony it would have involved …

Susan exhaled her cigarette smoke, nodding: “Serves him right for the Fascists he put on the Court. Suffer, Dickie, eat your little heart out.”

…
and my family unanimously urged me to do so …

Someone: “Pat's probably putting the silverware in the suitcase now.”

Someone: “With her cloth coat.”

Sssssssssh!

Therefore, I shall resign the presidency

YEAH!! Screams, cheers, hoots, applause.

effective at noon tomorrow.

Someone gave Nixon the Bronx cheer.

“President Ford,” said Lisa, trying it out.

Someone: “He's got it together. Do you think he's going to cry?”

Joan: “Next stop for you is Leavenworth, Mr. Nixon.”

To have served in this office is to have felt a very personal kinship with each and every American …

“I can't believe it,” Lisa said blankly.

Emma asked, “What are we going to do now that we've gotten Dickie out of office? An era is ending, for sure.”

Most people had drifted back to the drink table, talking amongst themselves. “… it's nothing short of vindication for everything we've worked for,” said some bearded man with thick glasses.

Susan said intently without removing the cigarette from her mouth: “C'mon Dick, for
me.
Say you're sorry.”

In leaving, I do so with this prayer: May God's grace be with you all in the days ahead.

“That's it?” someone whined.

“Damn,” said Emma, “I was waiting for a big scene, Checkers-style, not a dry eye in the house.”

Nixon faded out, the commentators took over, and the party cheered distractedly. “Bring out the pot!” someone yelled, and there was a general drift to Susan's bedroom, repository of the marijuana.