Establishment by Howard Fast Page A

shoulders, and she had a very strong feeling that Bernie felt the same way. She had been married less than two years. She wondered whether any marriage was very different—or whether perhaps thirty-two is past the age where a woman can mold herself into the shape a man demands. Or the man mold himself to what she desired? Hopeless. Yet she loved her husband and he loved her. If either had told the other that it was useless, that he or she wanted a divorce, there would have been a period of emotional agony. This way there was nothing. The thought frightened her. Why was there nothing? Why wasn’t she sprawled on her bed, weeping her heart out? Suppose Bernie never returned? Why wasn’t she stricken with terror at the years of loneliness she might face? Were all her feelings, all her writings, all her high-minded thoughts a fraud? Barbara did not regard it as a virtue that she was incapable of subjective pretense. She had no gift for lying to herself. She was not grief-stricken. That was the plain fact of the matter.
    She put Sam in his stroller and pushed him along Vallejo Street to her mother’s house. It was a clear, beautiful morning. The fog had burned off, and a brisk wind set the whitecaps on the bay to dancing. It was one of those mornings when San Francisco appears to crackle with electric excitement and the people on the street share their aliveness, walk with an extra verve, and breathe a little more deeply than usual.
    Oh, I do love this place , Barbara said to herself. But you have to be away for a long time to know it. It’s a place you have to return to .
    Eloise’s brother, Billy Clawson, was at the gallery when Barbara got there. He had come, hoping to find Eloise, but this was not her day to work. He was a tall, attenuated man of thirty, who had entered the ministry, Barbara had heard, to avoid the draft. Now, without a pulpit and with no desire for one, he spent his days doing absolutely nothing. The Clawsons were one of the wealthiest families in Oakland, and they had cast Eloise out of their lives and inheritance when she divorced Tom Lavette and married Adam Levy. The only redeeming thing Barbara had ever heard about Billy was that he did occasionally see his sister. Today he was wearing a clerical collar and explaining to Jean, “I do it as a lark. Of course, I’m a fraud, but aren’t most men of God? My virtue is that I don’t preach. But one does get the most interesting reactions from people. Do you know, they will stop you in the street to weep on your shoulder?”
    He greeted Barbara and then departed. Jean picked Sam up from the stroller and hugged him. “He’s such a good baby, Bobby. Doesn’t he ever cry?”
    â€œHe certainly does. Mother, does Billy Clawson do anything?”
    â€œNot that I know of.”
    â€œStrange.”
    â€œNot really. He’s not unique.”
    â€œMother,” Barbara said, “can I leave Sammy with you, and will you feed him? I have a lunch date with Harvey Baxter.”
    â€œHarvey Baxter?”
    â€œHe’s my lawyer. You remember, he took over Sam Goldberg’s practice.”
    â€œDid Bernie leave this morning?” Jean asked abruptly.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou don’t look very disturbed.”
    â€œI’m working it out.”
    â€œWould you like to talk about it?”
    â€œNo. Not now, please.”
    â€œI would like to talk about it,” Jean said.
    â€œThen perhaps we will, another time.”
    Harvey Baxter, a stout, serious man of forty-three, was waiting for her when she got to Gino’s. He had light brown hair, deep brown eyes, and he wore old-fashioned metal-rimmed glasses and three-piece vested suits of charcoal gray sharkskin. He had been with the firm of Goldberg and Benchly since he got out of law school twenty years earlier, and with the death of both partners, he had become the senior member of the firm. Goldberg and Benchly practiced civil