Looking for Rachel Wallace

11

I leaned against the cinder-block wall of studio two at Channel Four and watched Rachel Wallace prepare to promote her book and her cause. Off camera a half-dozen technician types in jeans and beards and sneakers hustled about doing technical things.

Rachel sat in a director’s chair at a low table. The interviewer was on the other side and on the table between them was a copy of Tyranny, standing upright and visible on a small display stand. Rachel sat calmly looking at the camera. The interviewer, a Styrofoam blonde with huge false eyelashes, was smoking a kingsized filter-tipped mentholated Salem cigarette as if they were about to tie her to the post and put on the blindfold. A technician pinned a small microphone to the lapel of Rachel’s gray flannel jacket and stepped out of the way. Another technician with a clipboard crouched beneath one of the cameras a foot and a half from the interviewer. He wore earphones.

“Ten seconds, Shirley,” he said. The interviewer nodded and snuffed her cigarette out in an ashtray on the floor behind her chair. A man next to me shifted in his folding chair and said, “Jesus Christ, I’m nervous.” He was scheduled to talk about raising quail after Rachel had finished. The technician squatting under the front camera pointed at the interviewer.

She smiled. “Hi,” she said to the camera. “I’m Shirley. And this is Contact. We have with us today feminist and lesbian activist Rachel Wallace. Rachel has written a new book, Tyranny, which takes the lid off of some of the ways government and business exploit women and especially gay women. We’ll be back to talk with Rachel about her book and these issues after this word.” A commercial for hair coloring came on the monitor overhead.

The guy with the earphones crouching beneath the camera said, “Good, Shirl.” Shirl took another cigarette from a box on the table behind Rachel’s book and lit up. She was able to suck in almost half of it before the guy under the camera said, “Ten seconds.” She snuffed this one out, leaned forward slightly, and when the picture came on the monitor, it caught her profile looking seriously at Rachel.

“Rachel,” she said, “do you think lesbians ought to be allowed to teach at a girls’ school?”

“Quite the largest percentage,” Rachel said, “of child molestations are committed by heterosexual men. As I pointed out in my book, the incidence of child molestation by lesbians is so small as to be statistically meaningless.”

“But what kind of role model would a lesbian provide?”

“Whatever kind she was. We don’t ask other teachers about their sexual habits. We don’t prevent so-called frigid women from teaching children, or impotent men. Children do not, it seems to me, have much chance in public school to emulate the sexual habits of their teachers. And if the teacher’s sexual preference is so persuasive to his or her students, why aren’t gays made straight by exposure to heterosexual teachers?”

“But might not the gay teacher subtly persuade his or her students toward a homosexual preference?”

Rachel said, “I just answered that, Shirley.”

Shirley smiled brilliantly. “In your book you allege frequent violations of civil rights in employment both by the government and the private sector. Many of the offenders are here in Massachusetts. Would you care to name some of them?”

Rachel was beginning to look annoyed. “I named all of them in my book,” she said.

“But,” Shirley said, “not all of our viewers have read it.”

“Have you?” Rachel said.

“I haven’t finished it yet,” Shirley said. “I’m sorry to say.” The guy crouching below the camera lens made a gesture with his hand, and Shirley said, “We’ll be right back with more interesting revelations from Rachel Wallace after this message.”

I whispered to Linda Smith, who stood in neat tweeds beside me, “Shirley doesn’t listen to the answers.”

“A lot of them don’t,” Linda said. “They’re busy looking ahead to the next question.”

“And she hasn’t read the book.”

Linda smiled and shook her head. “Almost none of them ever do. You can’t blame them. Sometimes you get several authors a week plus all the other stuff.”

“The pressure must be fearful,” I said. “To spend your working life never knowing what you’re talking about.”

“Lots of people do that,” Linda said. “I only hope Rachel doesn’t let her annoyance show. She’s a good interview, but she gets mad too easy.”

“That’s because if she had been doing the interview, she’d have read the book first.”

“Maybe,” Linda said, “but Shirley North has a lot of fans in the metropolitan area, and she can sell us some books. The bridge club types love her.”

A commercial for pantyhose concluded with a model holding out the crotch to show the ventilated panel, then Shirley came back on.

“In your book, Rachel, you characterize lesbianism as an alternative way of loving. Should everyone try it?”

“Everyone should do what she wants to do,” Rachel said. “Obviously people to whom the idea is not attractive should stay straight. My argument is, and has been, that those who do find that alternative desirable should not be victimized for that preference. It does no one any harm at all.”

“Is it against God’s law?”

“It would be arrogant of me to tell you God’s law. I’ll leave that to the people who think they have God’s ear. All I can say is that I’ve had no sign that He disapproves.”

“How about the argument that it is unnatural?”

“Same answer. That really implies a law of nature that exists immutably. I’m not in a position to know about that. Sartre said that perhaps existence precedes essence, and maybe we are in the process of making the laws of nature as we live.”

“Yes, certainly. Do you advocate lesbian marriage?”

“Shirley,” Rachel said. “I have documented corruption on several levels of local and state government, in several of the major corporations in the country, and you’ve asked me only about titillating things. In essence you’ve asked only about sex. That seems unbalanced to me.”

Shirley’s smile glowed. Her splendiferous eyelashes fluttered. “Isn’t that an interesting thought, Rachel? I wish we could spend more time, but I know you have to rush.” She picked up Tyranny. “Get Rachel’s book, Tyranny, published by Hamilton Black. You’ll love it, as I did. Thanks a million, Rachel. Come back again.”

Rachel muttered, “Thank you.”

Shirley said, “Now, this message.”

The guy squatting under the camera stood up and said, “Okay, next segment. Thanks a lot Mrs. Wallace. Shirley, you’re on the den set.” A technician took off Rachel’s lapel mike, and she got up and walked away. Shirley didn’t say goodbye. She was getting as much mentholated smoke into her as she could before the deodorant commercial ended.

Linda Smith said, “Oh, Rachel, you were dynamite.”

Rachel looked at me. I shrugged. Rachel said, “What’s that mean?”

I said, “It means you did your best in a difficult situation. You can’t look good being interviewed by Shirley North.”

Rachel nodded. Linda said, “Oh, no, I thought you were super.”

Rachel said nothing as we walked out of the studio and down the long corridor past the news set, empty now and shabby, then along the corridor where people sat in small offices and typed, and out into the lobby and reception area. On the big monitor opposite the reception desk Shirley was leaning toward the man who raised quail.

I frowned the way Shirley did and said in a high voice, “Tell me, do quails like to do it with anything but other quails?”

Rachel gave a snort. Linda smiled. Outside we parted—Rachel and I in my car, Linda in hers.

We wheeled along Soldiers’ Field Road with the Charles, quite small and winding this far up, on our left. I looked at Rachel. She was crying. Tears ran in silence down her cheeks. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her shoulders were a little hunched, and her body shook slightly. I looked back at the road. I couldn’t think of anything to say. She didn’t cry any harder and she didn’t stop. The only sound was the unsteady inhaling and exhaling as she cried. We went past Harvard Stadium.

I said, “Feel like a freak?”

She nodded.

“Don’t let them do that to you,” I said.

“A freak,” she said. Her voice was a little thick and a little unsteady, but if you didn’t see the tears, you wouldn’t be sure she was crying. “Or a monster. That’s how everyone seems to see us. Do you seduce little girls? Do you carry them off for strange lesbian rites? Do you use a dildo? God. God damn. Bastards.” Her shoulders began to shake harder.

I put my right hand out toward her with the palm up. We passed the business school that way—me with my hand out, her with her body shaking. Then she put her left hand in my right. I held it hard.

“Don’t let them do that to you,” I said.

She squeezed back at me and we drove the rest of the way along the Charles like that—our hands quite rigidly clamped together, her body slowly quieting down. When I got to the Arlington Street exit, she let go of my hand and opened her purse. By the time we stopped in front of the Ritz, she had her face dry and a little make-up on and herself back in place.

The doorman looked like I’d made a mess on his foot when I got out and nodded toward the Chevy. But he took it from me and said nothing. A job is a job. We went up in the elevator and walked to her room without saying a word. She opened the door. I stepped in first; she followed.

“We have to go to First Mutual Insurance Company at one. I’m addressing a women’s group there. Could you pick me up about twelve thirty?” Her voice was quite calm now.

“Sure,” I said.

“I’d like to rest for a while,” she said, “so please excuse me.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll be here at quarter to one.”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Lock the door behind me,” I said.

She nodded. I went out and waited until I heard the bolt click behind me. Then I went to the elevator and down.