Looking for Rachel Wallace

7

Inside the library, and downstairs in the small lecture room, there was no evidence that a disturbance had ever happened. The collection of elderly people, mostly women, all gray-haired, mostly overweight, was sitting placidly on folding chairs, staring patiently at the small platform and the empty lectern.

The two cops left us at the door. “We’ll sit around outside,” the young one said, “until you’re through.” Rachel Wallace was being introduced to the Friends of the Library president, who would introduce her to the audience. The young cop looked at her. “What did you say her name was?”

“Rachel Wallace,” I said.

“She some kind of queer or something?”

“She’s a writer,” I said. “She’s a feminist. She’s gay. She’s not easy to scare.”

The cop shook his head, “A goddamned lezzy,” he said to his partner. “We’ll be outside,” he said to me. They started up the stairs. Three steps up the young cop stopped and turned back to me. “You got a good punch,” he said. “You don’t see a lot of guys can hit that hard on a short jab.” Then he turned and went on up after his partner. Inside the room Rachel Wallace was sitting on a folding chair beside the lectern, her hands folded in her lap, her ankles crossed. The president was introducing her. On a table to the right of the lectern were maybe two dozen of Rachel Wallace’s books. I leaned against the wall to the right of the door in the back and looked at the audience. No one looked furtive. Not all of them looked awake. Linda Smith was standing next to me.

“Nice booking,” I said to her.

She shrugged. “It all helps,” she said. “Did you hit that man outside?”

“Just once,” I said.

“I wonder what she’ll say about that,” Linda Smith said.

I shrugged.

The president finished introducing Rachel and she stepped to the lectern. The audience clapped politely.

“I am here,” Rachel said, “for the same reason I write. Because I have a truth to tell, and I will tell it.”

I whispered to Linda Smith, “You think many of these people have read her books?”

Linda shook her head. “Most of them just like to come out and look at a real live author.”

“The word woman is derived from the Old English wifmann meaning ‘wife-person.’ The very noun by which our language designates us does so only in terms of men.”

The audience looked on loyally and strained to understand. Looking at them, you’d have to guess that the majority of them couldn’t find any area where they could agree with her. At least a plurality probably couldn’t find an area where they understood what she was talking about. They were library friends, people who had liked to read all their lives, and liked it in the library and had a lot of free time on their hands. Under other circumstances they would have shot a lesbian on sight.

“I am not here,” Rachel Wallace was saying, “to change your sexual preference. I am here only to say that sexual preference is not a legitimate basis for discriminatory practices, for maltreatment in the marketplace. I am here to say that a woman can be fulfilled without a husband and children, that a woman is not a breeding machine, that she need not be a slave to her family, a whore for her husband.”

An elderly man in a gray sharkskin suit leaned over to his wife and whispered something. Her shoulders shook with silent laughter. A boy about four years old got up from his seat beside his grandmother and walked down the center aisle to sit on the floor in front and stare up at Rachel. In the very last row a fat woman in a purple dress read a copy of Mademoiselle.

“How many books does this sell?” I whispered to Linda Smith.

She shrugged. “There’s no way to know, really,” she whispered. “The theory is that exposure helps. The more the better. Big scenes like the Today Show, small ones like this. You try to blanket a given area.”

“Are there any questions?” Rachel said. The audience stared at her. A man wearing white socks and bedroom slippers was asleep in the front row, right corner. In the silence the pages turning in Mademoiselle were loud. The woman didn’t seem to notice.

“If not, then thank you very much.”

Rachel stepped off the low platform past the small boy and walked down the center aisle toward Linda and me. Outside the hall there were multicolored small cookies on a table and a large coffee maker with a thumbprint near the spigot. Linda said to Rachel, “That was wonderful.”

Rachel said, “Thank you.”

The president of the Friends said, “Would you like some coffee and refreshments?”

Rachel said, “No, thank you.” She jerked her head at me, and the three of us headed for the door.

“You sure you don’t want any refreshment?” I said, as we went out the side door of the library.

“I want two maybe three martinis and lunch,” Rachel said. “What have I this afternoon, Linda?”

“An autographing in Cambridge.”

Rachel shivered. “God,” she said.

There was no one outside now except the two cops in the squad car. The pickets were gone, and the lawn was empty and innocent in front of the library. I shot at the young cop with my forefinger and thumb as we got into Linda Smith’s car. He nodded. We drove away.

“You and the young officer seem to have developed some sort of relationship. Have you met him before?”

“Not him specifically, but we know some of the same things. When I was his age, I was sort of like him.”

“No doubt,” she said, without any visible pleasure. “What sort of things do you both know? And how do you know you know them?”

I shrugged. “You wouldn’t get it, I don’t think. I don’t even know how we know, but we do.”

“Try,” Rachel said. “I am not a dullard. Try to explain.”

“We know what hurts,” I said, “and what doesn’t. We know about being scared and being brave. We know applied theory.”

“You can tell that, just by looking?”

“Well, partly. He had some combat decorations on his blouse.”

“Military medals?”

“Yeah, cops sometimes wear them. He does. He’s proud of them.”

“And that’s the basis of your judgment?”

“No, not just that. It’s the way he walks. How his mouth looks, the way he holds his head. The way he reacted to the protest leader.”

“I thought him a parody of machismo.”

“No, not a parody,” I said. “The real thing.”

“The real thing is a parody,” she said.

“I didn’t think you’d get it,” I said.

“Don’t you patronize me,” she said. “Don’t use that oh-women-don’t-understand-tone with me.”

“I said you didn’t understand. I didn’t say other women don’t. I didn’t say it was because you’re a woman.”

“And,” she snapped, “I assume you think you were some kind of Sir Galahad protecting my good name when you punched that poor sexist fool at the library. Well, you were not. You were a stupid thug. I will not have you acting on my behalf in a manner I deplore. If you strike another person except to save my life, I will fire you at that moment.”

“How about if I stick my tongue out at them and go bleaaah.”

“I’m serious,” she said.

“I’ll say.”

We were perfectly quiet then. Linda Smith drove back through Watertown toward Cambridge.

“I really thought the talk went very well, Rachel,” she said. “That was a tough audience, and I thought you really got to them.”

Rachel Wallace didn’t answer.

“I thought we could go into Cambridge and have lunch at the Harvest,” Linda said. “Then we could stroll up to the bookstore.”

“Good,” Rachel said. “I’m hungry, and I need a drink.”