Greer was going to say, “I can just eat the side dishes,” but then the subject changed, so she would remind Faith of her meatlessness later. Now everyone began talking about the summit, which would begin Tuesday.
“I still wish we’d gotten Senator McCauley,” said Helen. “I can’t let go of it.” There was studious quiet. Whenever the senator’s name came up everyone became a little depressed, almost destabilized. Senator Anne McCauley from Indiana was a powerful force, an antichoice steamroller, an alarming figure who had done a lot to chip away at women’s reproductive rights, and in particular the reproductive rights of women living in poverty. Despite being in her late sixties, Anne McCauley showed no sign of stopping.
“I tried,” said Tad. “I sent her office a slavish and eloquent letter. I used all my rhetorical flourishes, but they didn’t work.”
“It would be weird if she did agree to come,” said Iffat. “She’s no friend to women.”
“No, it wouldn’t be so weird,” Helen said. “She speaks at lots of events. She likes a good debate.”
“I swear, she’s going to try to run for president,” Evelyn said. “I know she’s getting up there in years, but still.”
“She scares the shit out of me,” said Bonnie.
Marcella said, “I grew up in Indianapolis, and I remember when she was running for reelection. She had this whole campaign against her pro-choice opponent. I remember there were pictures of fetuses.”
They talked about abortion rights, and the composition of the Senate, and about human trafficking, which was a subject Faith felt particularly strongly about, her voice sharpening whenever it came up. And then somehow there was a brief side trip into a discussion about a TV crime show from the UK with a hot female character named DCI Gemma Braithwaite, who was beleaguered by the sexism in her department and the violence in her district. Most of the people there loved Gemma Braithwaite, and the entire group, Faith included, quoted aloud a line from a recent episode, which had become sort of a catchphrase: “I shall take no shite from anyone. Sir.” Then they all laughed, and drank some more.
Helen started talking about women being part of an economic structure so unjust that it could only be fixed by undoing the whole thing. “Piece by fucking piece,” she said, and Ben raised his glass. Faith dismissed this. “Even if that ever happened here,” she said, “women would still get shafted. Look at Cuba and Venezuela. Women there still aren’t equal.”
“What’s your perspective on that?” Greer heard herself ask. Everyone looked at her. Marcella’s mouth was pulled tight, as if she was thinking: You dunce; who would ask such an ignorant question? But no one else looked at Greer like that; certainly not Faith, who was glad to try to answer.
“I think the ideas about what men are and women are, what they essentially are, go very deep,” she said. “That women are subordinate. That women will always be thwarted. These are the ideas that have taken hold everywhere. Sure there’s an economic piece, and that’s always been true. But there’s a psychological piece too, and we can’t forget it.” A few of them nodded, although they’d heard versions of this from her before. Bonnie and Evelyn, who in particular had certainly heard many versions of this, looked happy to hear it again.
“I’ve noted,” said Faith, “that when people speak about feminism they take one tack or the other. Our foundation has to look at all of it. We need to keep thinking about the role that economics plays. Because no matter how fair a society is, it’s still going to be women who have the babies. And that sets them up for housewifery and the double day.” She reached up to a high shelf and pulled down an old salad spinner. Lettuce was rinsed and dumped in, and then Faith yanked hard on the string again and again, as if it were an outboard motor. She kept talking over the din. “Even in highly evolved places like Sweden and Norway, women end up doing most of the shitwork. Though they probably call it something cute—the way IKEA names all its furniture, so it sounds better. I have a chair at home named ‘Leifarne.’ But we still need to see things for what they really are.” She let the salad spinner putter to a stop, then glanced around at them; everyone was listening, and no one had the recessive, tuned-out quality that could happen when groups of people got together and drank.
“Bonnie and Evelyn and I are so old,” Faith said, “that we remember the sixties as if it were yesterday—”
“—or this morning,” said Evelyn.
“And let it be a cautionary tale. The women’s movement back then had to separate itself from the male-dominated left because, you know what? The left wasn’t all that interested in us. My sense is that we’re going to be seeing that again. We’re going to come up against progressives who will say that women’s problems can’t be solved under the current system, but that everything will change for women more or less automatically when that system is changed. We’re also going to need to show that we support anti-racist work. You know I got Emmett to pour special-project money into a reproductive justice group, and also an organization that supports young black women writers. But of course that’s not enough. Anyway, I hope our first summit makes a big splash. I hope we make a difference.”
They were all silent, and when she was done speaking, Tad said, “Thank you for inviting us here, Faith. It’s really an honor.”
“Oh, don’t feel that way. I want you to feel relaxed around me.” Faith smiled a peculiar smile, amused at herself, and added, “Which is why I drugged all of your drinks.”
“Faith Frank embroiled in a roofie scandal,” said Ben. “That would make the news.”
“And get more attention for Loci,” said Greer.
“That reminds me,” Faith said. “Someone tell me about the music we’ve started to line up. Because if it were left to me, I’d be bringing in the feminist folk singers I met years ago at Lilith Fair. And that would be . . . well, very far from ka-ching!”
Everyone laughed now, and Helen said, “Oh, Faith, you know what? I just love you.”
“And I love you too,” said Faith.
“We got Li’l Nuzzle, by the way,” Marcella said.
“No shit?” said Tad.
“Is it L apostrophe I-L? Or L-I apostrophe L?” asked Ben. “I can never remember.”
“I don’t know,” said Greer. He smiled at her and she smiled back, then they both looked away shyly.
“I’m afraid I don’t even really know who that is,” Faith said.
“A hip-hop act,” said Iffat. “She’s awesome. You’ll love her, Faith.”
“I guess Big Nuzzle wasn’t available,” said Greer. She looked down at the onions and saw that somehow a pyramid of slices lay on the cutting board; how had she cut so much already? Also, she noticed with some bewilderment that the wine was gone from her green, bubbled glass.
“As I said, we’ve got an excellent slate,” Faith said. “Our naval commander. Our activist nun.”
“I love how we don’t even remember their names,” said Marcella.
“I remember their names, and you should too,” said Faith. “But not tonight. Tonight, we drink wine and eat steak and kick back and chill out.”
Greer refilled her glass and looked around at everyone, thinking then how lucky she was to be here with these people, this focus group of the old and the young, the heavy and the thin, the black and the brown and the white, the gay and the straight and possibly the bisexual. Though Zee would say all of this was a completely reductive way to see people, and probably it was. But tonight Greer took in the fellowship of everyone here. The famous and the unknown, the bitter, the salty, and the sweet. And even the umami. Faith was umami, in a way, Greer thought—a special and separate taste that, once you’d tried it, you wanted more of.
As they talked and laughed and drank, Greer imagined telling Cory every detail after the weekend. He liked stories from her New York life, just as Greer liked stories from Manila, where he lived a life in mirror-opposite to hers. She already had so much to tell him from this weekend.