ratification.”
“Sounds like a witch’s spell. Ratification —turns you into a rat.”
Sara swatted me. “It’s going to turn us into actual persons with rights,” she said. “Women will be able to choose our next president.”
“Right now, I’ve chosen me a husband, if he stops promising and actually comes through. He sold one story this spring, to some fancy magazine called The Smart Set, then spent the whole thirty dollars they paid him on a feathered fan for me and flannel pants for him. He can’t find work he likes—he’s writing advertising copy for ninety dollars a month and living in some terribly depressing apartment near … what did he say? Harlem? Some place kind of in the city but not really. He hates his job, but he keeps saying, Soon, and I have to tell you, the more he says it, the less I believe it. How long is soon? It isn’t days, or weeks, or a season. It’s a placeholder is what it is, no measure at all.” I leaned toward Sara. “Do you think I’m foolish to marry him? Tell me. I trust your opinion.”
“Does he love you—and I mean genuinely, for the special person you are and not just some idealized feminine object?”
“He does, but—”
“But what?”
“If he doesn’t succeed, he’ll be miserable. I’d have a miserable husband and a miserable apartment. Romantic as I am, I’m pretty certain love does not conquer all. Plus I haven’t had a letter from him in two weeks . He’s got this whole other life. Other friends.”
“So do you, from his perspective,” Sara said. “Give him a little more time. If he regards you the way you say he does, he’s a rare man, Zelda. Even in times as modern as ours is becoming, most men don’t see any reason to get well acquainted with more of a woman than her vagina.”
“Why, Sara Haardt,” I said admiringly. “Goucher’s given you quite the vocabulary.”
“Are you ever serious?”
“You’ve known me my whole life.”
“Right.” She laughed. “Most women hear things like I just said—and I don’t mean only that word—and want to put their fingers in their ears. ‘What about romance?’ they say. ‘What about love?’ We can have romance, love, sex, respect, self-respect, and fulfilling employment in whatever interests us, if we like. Motherhood doesn’t need to be our whole lives—it can be one feature in a woman’s broader life, the same as fatherhood is for men.”
“You really think so?”
“If we had easy, legal ways to prevent pregnancy—other than the obvious one, I mean. Those are coming, too, thanks to women like Margaret Sanger.”
And to women like Sara, who’d led the Montgomery campaign for women’s rights. I said, “You are impressive, Sara Haardt. I really ought to at least try to be more like you.”
“What fun would that be?”
“That’s the problem in a nutshell, isn’t it?”
* * *
In late May, I got bronchitis with a cough so severe that it kept me housebound. While I waited for the fever and cough to break and for Scott to report back on a lead he’d gotten for a newspaper job, I read. First was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which Daddy had given me. “Some food for thought,” he said, “now that you have to sit still for a spell. See if it doesn’t open your eyes about your future.”
That wasn’t the book for the job; that one amounted to a dry bunch of Stoic platitudes everyone had heard before but no lively person actually wanted to observe. “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.” The man was a killjoy. Clearly, joy-killing was Daddy’s intention, too.
The eye-opener was Plashers Mead by Compton Mackenzie, which Scott had sent. Its protagonist, Guy Hazlewood, resembled the romantic poet Scott said he saw in himself, and its heroine, Guy’s fiancée, Pauline Grey, was a passionate woman Scott said reminded him of me. These characters were older
“Sounds like a witch’s spell. Ratification —turns you into a rat.”
Sara swatted me. “It’s going to turn us into actual persons with rights,” she said. “Women will be able to choose our next president.”
“Right now, I’ve chosen me a husband, if he stops promising and actually comes through. He sold one story this spring, to some fancy magazine called The Smart Set, then spent the whole thirty dollars they paid him on a feathered fan for me and flannel pants for him. He can’t find work he likes—he’s writing advertising copy for ninety dollars a month and living in some terribly depressing apartment near … what did he say? Harlem? Some place kind of in the city but not really. He hates his job, but he keeps saying, Soon, and I have to tell you, the more he says it, the less I believe it. How long is soon? It isn’t days, or weeks, or a season. It’s a placeholder is what it is, no measure at all.” I leaned toward Sara. “Do you think I’m foolish to marry him? Tell me. I trust your opinion.”
“Does he love you—and I mean genuinely, for the special person you are and not just some idealized feminine object?”
“He does, but—”
“But what?”
“If he doesn’t succeed, he’ll be miserable. I’d have a miserable husband and a miserable apartment. Romantic as I am, I’m pretty certain love does not conquer all. Plus I haven’t had a letter from him in two weeks . He’s got this whole other life. Other friends.”
“So do you, from his perspective,” Sara said. “Give him a little more time. If he regards you the way you say he does, he’s a rare man, Zelda. Even in times as modern as ours is becoming, most men don’t see any reason to get well acquainted with more of a woman than her vagina.”
“Why, Sara Haardt,” I said admiringly. “Goucher’s given you quite the vocabulary.”
“Are you ever serious?”
“You’ve known me my whole life.”
“Right.” She laughed. “Most women hear things like I just said—and I don’t mean only that word—and want to put their fingers in their ears. ‘What about romance?’ they say. ‘What about love?’ We can have romance, love, sex, respect, self-respect, and fulfilling employment in whatever interests us, if we like. Motherhood doesn’t need to be our whole lives—it can be one feature in a woman’s broader life, the same as fatherhood is for men.”
“You really think so?”
“If we had easy, legal ways to prevent pregnancy—other than the obvious one, I mean. Those are coming, too, thanks to women like Margaret Sanger.”
And to women like Sara, who’d led the Montgomery campaign for women’s rights. I said, “You are impressive, Sara Haardt. I really ought to at least try to be more like you.”
“What fun would that be?”
“That’s the problem in a nutshell, isn’t it?”
* * *
In late May, I got bronchitis with a cough so severe that it kept me housebound. While I waited for the fever and cough to break and for Scott to report back on a lead he’d gotten for a newspaper job, I read. First was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which Daddy had given me. “Some food for thought,” he said, “now that you have to sit still for a spell. See if it doesn’t open your eyes about your future.”
That wasn’t the book for the job; that one amounted to a dry bunch of Stoic platitudes everyone had heard before but no lively person actually wanted to observe. “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.” The man was a killjoy. Clearly, joy-killing was Daddy’s intention, too.
The eye-opener was Plashers Mead by Compton Mackenzie, which Scott had sent. Its protagonist, Guy Hazlewood, resembled the romantic poet Scott said he saw in himself, and its heroine, Guy’s fiancée, Pauline Grey, was a passionate woman Scott said reminded him of me. These characters were older
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