Chapter Thirteen #2
Last year at Christmas, Julia decided to pin her down. When she mentioned an event she attended, Mother replied with her usual: “It sounds like you found it interesting. I’m glad.”
“Just for me, Mother, or also glad for you?”
“If you’re asking if I favor suffrage, Julia, I do,” Mother had replied wearily.
“She gave you the answer you wanted,” Louisa said later, when Julia relayed the conversation.
“Now that it’s socially acceptable.”
“You never asked her directly before.”
True, but Julia was not inclined to give her mother the benefit of the doubt. The movement had gained so much momentum in Boston, it was backward to be an “anti.” Before that was the case, Julia was sure Mother would have evaded the question. Wait for the signal! One must not be right too soon!
“I’m not asking if you support suffrage,” Julia said now. “I’m wondering what you think about its chances.” She knew she was not helping ease the strain, but she could not help herself.
“You know I don’t care for politics, Julia.”
What DO you care for, exactly? Julia felt like screaming.
As a girl, Julia had been in the habit of thinking of her mother as rather a good sort of person—elegant, an excellent athlete, and amusing at times. She had chalked up their differences to temperament: Julia was more open, whereas Mother was more contained.
She had given little thought to the differences between her mother and her aunt, but it was Anna who had defied society’s expectations, and Anna who helped steer Julia to Barnard, her first real step off the straight and narrow path.
Was there a scrap of evidence that Mother, who had defied no expectations, would have been anything but delighted if Julia had taken the path she herself had—debutante season, marriage, and settling down to life in the shallow world of Boston society?
To the extent the meal was salvaged, it was thanks to Louisa, who redirected the conversation by asking Pauline if she had seen the new torpedo factory on the waterfront in Alexandria, Virginia.
She had, and Louisa was able to draw her out on the subject.
Pauline was not effusive, but Louisa’s curiosity lent her some dignity, and required her to emerge from her shell sufficiently to provide more than one-word answers.
It also gave Julia’s temper time to cool.
Maudie had invited Julia and Louisa to come over after dinner, so they fetched sweaters, said good night to the boys, and then returned to the living room, where William and Pauline sat on opposite ends of the sofa, William hidden behind a newspaper and Pauline embroidering a handkerchief.
“Pauline, would you like to come with us?” Julia asked.
William folded down the corner of his paper and looked at Pauline, eyebrows up and lips pursed, like a parent whose child is on the verge of doing something naughty.
“I think I will stay here with William,” she said, her own expression blank, as William disappeared behind the paper again.
“My brother is a beast,” Julia said, practically spitting, as they headed down the road toward Maudie’s house.
“I suspect there is something we don’t know, but he is behaving very badly,” Louisa replied. Somewhere in the corner of her heart, Louisa had always harbored a little sympathy for William. Julia might have found this annoying, had Louisa not also been fully awake to his faults.
“What do you think it is?”
“I haven’t the slightest notion,” Louisa said sadly.
In the years since Maudie and John were married, their cottage had taken on the look of George and Nora Graham’s house. The porch was lined with fishing poles and potted plants. Inside, things were homey and unfussy.
“I’m not getting up,” Ruthie said, waving at them from the living room, where she sat in a comfortable chair, legs stretched out before her on an ottoman, a plate of crackers resting on her very large belly. She was well along in her first pregnancy, and amusingly grumpy.
“They call it an interesting condition. I’ve never been less interesting in my life,” she grumbled, as they arrayed themselves around her.
“You’re not what’s interesting,” Maudie replied.
“What is, then? Is it what led to this condition? If such discussion is a rite of passage of motherhood, somebody failed to tell me.” They all laughed.
“It’s not what led to it, but what it will lead to,” Maudie said.
“Oh, I see. So, I’m just a vessel. How charming.”
Julia found Ruthie’s candor refreshing. While her friends on Haven Point were following in their mothers’ footsteps, at least they were not stiff and repressed, like Julia’s own family.
Ruthie and Maudie, eager to hear about life in Washington, asked lots of questions about Julia’s students and Louisa’s work in the labor movement.
They even inquired about Mina, whom they remembered from her visit years ago.
(Granted, Mina did tend to leave rather indelible impressions.) They were fascinated to learn that Mina had been one of the suffragists arrested and imprisoned.
“We were all devastated, of course, about Delaware failing to ratify the amendment,” Julia said.
“Oh, they didn’t ratify?” Ruthie replied. “What a shame.”
She seemed genuinely chagrined, but Julia felt the balloon of charitable feelings deflate. She understood that Ruthie had other things on her mind, but Delaware’s outcome had been so anticipated and the result so devastating, it was difficult to comprehend her missing this pivotal event.
When they returned to Fourwinds, Julia flopped on her bed, arms crossed behind her head. “I can’t believe Ruthie didn’t even know about Delaware.”
Louisa was putting her nightgown on, and when her head emerged, Julia saw her frown.
“That’s not fair. Ruthie worked for suffrage in Massachusetts. They were one of the first to ratify, and she and Maudie both canvassed in Maine last summer.”
“But she isn’t anxious about it!”
“What matters more? What they actually did, or how they regard it at this moment?”
“Both! We need action and urgency,” Julia insisted.
“How will women ever get unstuck if people aren’t even paying attention?
They’re all too content here, too sheltered from what’s going on in the world.
They just get married, have babies, and never question themselves. It’s all so backward-looking.”
Julia knew she was being unreasonably harsh, but Ruthie’s ignorance was the final straw. She felt a bitterness setting in, a vague sense that all she feared about herself, her family, and Haven Point was being proved correct.
Louisa was quiet for a moment; then she sat on her bed and looked at Julia.
“I can’t help feeling that it’s not you talking, but Pelham Stewart,” she said finally. Her tone was gentle, but there was a hint of admonition in her eyes.
“It’s not. It’s me talking,” Julia insisted.
The words were hers now, but Louisa was not far off in that Pelham’s thoughts were behind them.
A year ago, Julia sat sweltering in her apartment, reading a letter from Pelham, in which he informed her that he would not be returning to America anytime soon.
He had joined a group of young people in France who were trying to set up agricultural communes in Russia, recruiting workers and experts in infrastructure and modern agricultural methods.
I feel I must do what I can for the Russian people, whom I am sure will soon show the world a new and better way of arranging society. Though the capitalist powers are threatened by this, and doing all in their power to thwart them, the Russians will prevail.
In the meantime, we are living as we mean to go on, in a small house in the French countryside.
We share in cooking and cleaning. Each gives according to his or her own means and talents.
We live simply, but our needs are simple, and as it is not far from Paris, I am able to write the occasional magazine story.
It is enthralling, Julia, like a miniature Brook Farm! Would you come? It is the chance to be at the vanguard of a new order, and Russia will need enlightened teachers. It is a good deal to ask, I know. How might I persuade you?
So keen was Julia to see him, she was briefly tempted. Had she not always loved the idea of being so … so enmeshed? Her happiest memories of Barnard were of her friends piled into Julia and Louisa’s suite like pack animals.
It did not last long, of course. She could only imagine how friends and family would react. I’m leaving my job and sailing to France to live on a commune … Do I know the people? Well, one of them. A man, in fact. We spent a few hours together two years ago, but we’ve been pen pals ever since!
Besides, while Julia thought the idea of communism was interesting and, if pressed, could even admire the idea of experimenting with a different way of living, she had hardly embraced it!
And while she felt deeply for the Russian people and admired Pelham and his compatriots’ desire to help, she could not help wondering if it actually would.
That said, she had never felt about any man as she did about Pelham.
Despite the years apart, the memory of his intense blue eyes, powerful frame, and rugged handsomeness could still make her heart beat faster, and their epistolary relationship had only deepened her fascination with the workings of his brilliant mind.
Julia had not forgotten the letters in which Pelham had seemed dismissive of her perspectives, but for the most part, he had been the one person who made her feel like she belonged—who spotted her on the outskirts of the crowd, pulled her in, and made her a part of his exhilarating world.
It had affirmed something Julia saw in herself, or wanted to see.
To lose him would be to lose that sense of validation.
Julia put off a firm no by saying she was obliged to finish the school year, but she confessed that she also found the idea a bit overwhelming.