They followed her, laughing and stumbling a little, holding on to one another in the narrow stairwell, someone’s hand on someone else’s shoulder or hip, all that jutting female convexity contained in a single, steeply pitched corridor. They planned future issues as they descended the stairs, feeling certain that their enterprise would last as long as the earth itself. The women were flushed with happiness, made greater because it was a communal flush. At the bottom there were easy hugs among friends in the way that women did, and that men wouldn’t do for at least another twenty-five years.
And soon they were all petitioning, going to Washington and to panel discussions and raucous events, making bang-on-a-can-loud noise. “Bra-burning,” journalists wrote about the women’s movement, though bra-burning wasn’t actually a thing. In retrospect, Faith thought that some of what had happened during this time looked a little absurd, but she was reminded by older activists that the vanguard had to be extreme so that the more moderate people could take up the cause and be accepted. Faith was often exhausted in those years, falling asleep in someone else’s lap in the hallway of a municipal building. She had a soft shoulder bag made out of different pieces of patchwork fabric, and she took it with her everywhere. At first it contained leaflets, cigarettes, chocolate, policy papers, phone numbers, though later on it also held baby bottles and loose diaper pins.
But before all of that had happened—before Bloomer, before Faith Frank became Faith Frank—still on the very first night, after the evening in the apartment in upper Manhattan full of women who had something to say, Faith excitedly returned to her own apartment in the Village. Annie Silvestri, who had remained her roommate over all these years, was rolling up her hair with orange juice cans and getting ready for bed, but Faith was in an excited mood and wanted to talk about what had happened that evening.
“I told them about your abortion,” she said.
Annie turned around. “What? You did?”
“Well, I didn’t use your name or say who you were, of course. But I told them about it to make a point. We need to make a point. A lot of points.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Faith, I don’t want to make a point,” Annie said.
“I understand, but there are other women out there who’ve been through the same experience. We need to talk about it.”
“‘We’?”
“Yes, we. Women are already doing this. I want to help them. Everybody’s been there for civil rights and stopping the war. For years everyone has been out there. We need to be out there like that for legal abortion. Why don’t you want to be part of it so that other women don’t have to go through what you did? I don’t understand.”
“That’s the difference between us,” Annie said. “I’ve been through enough, and I don’t feel the need to figure it out or talk about it. It happened to me, Faith, not to you. It happened to me, and it was really horrible, and I have spent a lot of time trying to separate myself from that night when I hemorrhaged and was treated like dirt. You can say we need abortion reform, and you want to be part of it, and good for you, but I never want to talk about that experience ever again, and I am not kidding you. So if you’re going to keep being my roommate, if we’re going to keep living here together, that’s one of the ground rules.”
They shared the apartment for a few more months, though their friendship had changed. Neither of them talked about the change, and when they were both home at the same time they came together for a shared meal, often a quick TV dinner, but the conversation kept to new boundaries. Faith was propelled almost exclusively by political work, and Annie, who had begun dating a law student, was quietly reading up on everything he was studying, at first so they could have something to talk about, but then because it interested her too. She found she had a preternatural skill for reading and comprehending legal language.
Annie married the law student, who got an academic position teaching undergraduates at Purdue. “We’re going to the Midwest, can you believe it?” Annie said. There were a few postcards back and forth in the beginning, and then silence, and nothing was heard of her again for a very long time. Faith continued to go to antiwar rallies, but now she became increasingly involved with abortion reform, attending smaller meetings—all women, everyone talking, but not at once. Along with the others, Faith was lifted onto the lightest but strongest breeze; she wondered if it was her own consciousness, or something entirely different. Whatever it was, it pulled her along.
* * *
? ? ?
In the early months of Bloomer, after advertising had been tentatively secured for a few small, modest issues and there had been a flurry of initial press about the magazine, Faith and two other women went out to find advertisers for future issues. “If we don’t sell more ad space,” said Shirley, “we’re going to go under permanently in about a minute. We are an underdog. I think we’re going to really have to push ourselves here.”
One morning in the summer of 1973, during a meeting at Nabisco, Faith, Shirley Pepper, and Evelyn Pangborn sat in a conference room with three men, pushing for an ad buy, giving their usual spiel. It didn’t go particularly well—it rarely did—for it was hard to convey why a massive corporation ought to advertise in this number-two magazine for women’s libbers that was likely to fail soon and become just a quirk, a footnote from this rolling time.
The men at Nabisco said they would “see,” and that they would “think about it.” Finally one of them stood and said, “Thank you, ladies, we will put our noggins together and reach a decision.” They were more courteous than some—really, more courteous than most.
On the way out of the meeting, one of the men looked at Faith and said, “Wait. I know you.”
“Sorry?”
He pulled her aside and she looked at him; he’d been coiled in a corner the whole time in his chair, a businessman in his midthirties, lean, tailored, sideburned, dark and attractive. Something about him registered in her now, but it was still unclear to her what it was.
“Didn’t we meet a long time ago?” he asked quietly. “In Las Vegas? At the Swann?”
She stared at him, shocked, and then it returned to her. He’d been the man who’d come to the casino one night with a woman, the man who had flirted with Faith and told her about how he worked in the field of . . . cookies and crackers, that was what he’d said.
“How did you possibly remember me?” Faith asked him. “It’s been, what, seven or eight years. It’s sort of insane that you remember.”
“I’m good that way. You warned me that the house would always win. I think you saved me from ruin, so thank you.”
“You’re welcome. But also, I look totally different now. No uniform. And . . . my hair.”
“Right, it was sort of vertical back then, I think. Do I look different to you?”
She looked him over for an extended and pleasurable moment. He was much more stylish than his colleagues, less aggressively corporate, and leaner and younger. His dark hair was longer than it had been back in ’65, of course. He wore an expensive suit now that was cut well, and, she saw, no wedding ring. He smelled interesting, acidic.
It would turn out that he was right, he was good that way; he remembered everything from every moment. But the catch was that he remembered it only if he was paying attention, which he didn’t always do.
“Can we explore the question of that ad space a little more?” he asked. “I’m not sure any of my colleagues were convinced by your pitch. To tell you the truth, I’m pretty sure they weren’t.”
“You mean just me? Or me and the others?”
“Just you. One-on-one might accomplish more.”
Of course, there was strong flirtation here again, as there had been in the casino; it wasn’t hidden, but was out in the open like his acidic fragrance, and didn’t supersede the truth of what he was saying. Faith and Shirley and Evelyn hadn’t been very successful selling ads so far; from here they were going off to talk to the people at Clairol, but it was obvious that their standard pitch wasn’t working very well.
“I think it requires a longer conversation,” he said. “Dinner with me tonight? While it’s still fresh in our minds?”