Out of Time Read online

  I nodded weakly. I couldn’t think quickly enough to protest.

  • • •

  I still had a few weeks to decide about renewing the lease. The apartment had been a burden all along, but now at ten percent more, with me earning only a hundred and fifty a week and getting no assistantship money, it was an enormous load.

  On a whim, I walked down to Eighty-fifth Street and found Number 223, a turn-of-the-century building with seven floors. To my amazement, I rang the bell for the super.

  “Yeah?” came a scratchy woman’s voice over the intercom.

  “Any vacancies?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said, not at all sure she should talk to me, “I’ll be right out.”

  She took a look at me through the door and decided I was all right to talk to. She patted her housedress into place. “You need an apartment?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “My building’s gone co-op.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t tell you this, but a lady died not too long ago. A real nice apartment. The boss has been wanting her out for a long time. Rent control, y’know. But it looks like the woman who took care of her might stay on. Her name’s on the lease, too, it turns out. But we’ll have to wait and see what she plans to do.” She pulled back a minute, afraid she had said too much. Real estate in New York can be a vicious business. “If she leaves, I’m sure it’ll go up to five or six times higher, maybe more. They’ll renovate it.” She took in my blue jeans and denim jacket and must have concluded I was only imitation yuppie. “You don’t look like you could afford it,” she finished, starting to close the door on me.

  “Wait,” I said. “At least give me the landlord’s number, so I can keep in touch.” She glared at me, her eyes filming over like sheets of dirty glass. I dug in my pocket and pulled out ten dollars, a good portion of my pay for the week.

  She rattled off the number, and for want of a better place to put it, I wrote it on my arm. When I tried to dial it later, it had been temporarily disconnected.

  • • •

  That was the beginning of a short dry period. I felt like Lucy and Harriet had left me. In the photographs, they looked like cardboard figures. The life and sparkle had gone out of their eyes. Or maybe it had gone from me. I didn’t know who I was anymore, or what I was doing. At thirty-two years old I had a lot of worthless sheepskins in the closet and no prospects for the future. I would be lucky to make my next rent payment. I was lying nonstop to everyone, including my lover. I had become one big living deception. Worst of all was the temporary loss of my friends from another time.

  “Do you believe in time travel?” I asked Margielove one day as I was sprawled out in the shop, organizing the postcards into neat categories. “How about voices from the past?”

  She looked at me cautiously from behind pink, heart-shaped sunglasses. I thought her the perfect person to ask, because she was frozen in the sixties.

  She was, I’m sure, about to say “Yes.” She was about to tell me all the voices she had heard, Jimi Hendrix and Janis and Malcolm X. But just as she was opening her mouth, just as the words were forming, I picked out of the shoebox an old postcard from Montauk and flipped it over. In a familiar hand, I read, “Dearest S., Had to get away from the city. The weather’s beautiful, the beach a dream. Hope you’re getting on without us. Kisses, L. and H.”

  I must have gasped or cried out, because Margielove was suddenly beside me, towering over me in her fluorescent pink caftan. “What is it?” she said. “You turned completely white.” I handed her the postcard, which she read without surprise. “Someone you know?” she asked.

  When I looked at it again, I realized I was going crazy. The handwriting was totally foreign, the card addressed to “Miss Gertrude Blair” in Hicksville, N.Y. “Dear Friend,” it said, “Did you have a good time last night? Best wishes, N.S.” I stared up at Margielove in disbelief.

  “Kind of funny,” she said, reading it once again.

  “I have to go home now,” I said, and she agreed without asking questions.

  As I was barreling out of the door, with Margielove saying, “Take care, Susan,” from behind me, I plowed right into Catherine, who was on her way to my apartment. It was our night to go to the Lesbian Archives.

  “Susan,” she said, taking me by both arms. I was shaking under her touch. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. What is it?”

  “Catherine,” I said softly, feeling like I was melting into the sidewalk, “take me home.”

  • • •

  Later, after I’d taken a nap, I stood staring at Catherine in a confused way from the doorway of the bedroom. I felt a little like an amnesia victim who is just regaining memory.

  “What happened back there?” she asked. I remained in the doorway, bracing myself on the door frame with both hands.

  “I was hallucinating,” I said.

  “About what? And what were you doing in that shop? Don’t you have to teach class today?”

  I sat down next to her on the couch, and she offered me the box of saltines she’d been nibbling from. I took one and bit it in half.

  “Things are becoming too real,” I said.

  “What things?” she persisted, but I didn’t answer. Instead I picked up the scrapbook from its place on the coffee table. “Susan,” Catherine said, sternly, “do we have to do that now?”

  I flipped through to the photos of The Gang at Montauk. They stood in a tight line, their arms entwined, perched on a precipice overlooking the sea at Montauk Point. If they had been fragile women, they would have blown away.

  But they stood their ground, a firm and impenetrable chain. Elinor, the tallest and sturdiest, held onto her hat. Sarah, beside her, let her hair blow wildly across her face. Harriet, next, pushed her hair aside so everyone could see her clearly. Lucy, at the other end, the second tallest, looked longingly sideways at Harriet.

  Did I really, I wondered, take the picture?

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Catherine, “what did you say?”

  “I said, were you hallucinating about these women? Susan, can you hear me?” Her voice was getting louder and louder, as if she believed hallucinations could destroy your hearing. Or maybe because she could see I was somewhere else.

  And then, as if by the power of suggestion, I was. I was lowering the camera to my side.

  “Thank you,” I smiled, “for the lovely postcard. I was worried about you.”

  “Everyone needs some time away,” Harriet said.

  “We should be getting back soon,” Elinor pointed out, smoothing her skirt and stepping away from the cliff. “Sarah has a meeting to attend.”

  “You shouldn’t worry,” Lucy said, maybe to me, maybe to Elinor.

  “I’m worried about you,” someone was saying, and I could tell by the long, cool fingers pressing into my arm that it was Catherine.

  “You shouldn’t worry.” I smiled. I looked down at my watch. “We have an appointment, don’t we? At the Archives?”

  “Oh, shit,” she said. “I totally forgot to cancel.”

  I closed the scrapbook and replaced it on the table. “So let’s keep it,” I said.

  6

  I had been to the Archives once two years before with Catherine, on a volunteer night. She had been working with them for some time, helping them to catalog their voluminous periodical collection. It was work I was not cut out for. I had gotten bored, started checking off periodicals on the list by mistake, and, after a while, excused myself to scan the old novels on the bookshelves. That was where I had picked up the names of authors like Vin Packer. Catherine was embarrassed by my behavior and from then on went alone to volunteer nights.

  Roz greeted us warmly at the door. She and Catherine talked for a while about the success of the women’s history conference and about Catherine’s work on immigration. Then Catherine spoke for me.

  “Susan made a wonderful find,” she said, poking me so I would hear my cue. I had refused to bring the entire album, but I had wrapped some of the bes
t photos and carried them in my bag. “A photo album from the twenties.”

  Roz was probably expecting to see the entire album and looked at me curiously when I drew out a small package instead.

  “She doesn’t like to travel with it,” Catherine explained, and because that sounded pathetic, even to me, I found my voice.

  “It’s fragile,” I explained, “and falling apart.”

  “Oh, of course,” Roz said, kindly.

  We spread the pictures out on a long table and stood in a row, examining them. Roz turned them over carefully but casually, just like Catherine did, just like a person familiar with history.

  “Do you know any of them?” Catherine asked. “I thought maybe, by chance, they were members of Heterodoxy or one of the other women’s clubs.”

  Heterodoxy, I knew from Catherine, had been a New York City feminist society that held regular luncheon meetings in the early to mid-1900s.

  “Sarah Stern, definitely,” she said, enthusiastically. “And Lucy Weir for a short time. The others, no. Harriet was Lucy’s lover, I recognize the name.”

  “And Elinor, Sarah’s,” I put in, forgetting I had no basis for that knowledge, except that I had heard it from Elinor’s own mouth.

  Catherine broke in, “Well, probably, but we don’t know for sure.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t really know anything about their private lives,” Roz said, staring at the Montauk shot. “Sarah was an economic historian and labor organizer. She wrote a couple of books that never had much impact because of her radical politics and the fact that she didn’t have any degrees. She was, I think, good friends with Crystal Eastman and others, like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. I knew she never married, but no one’s confirmed she was a lesbian. I have a file on her here, some articles she wrote before 1920, if you’d like to see them.”

  “That would be great. And Lucy?” Catherine asked, smiling sideways at me.

  “Lucy was a novelist and English teacher. She taught at Barnard for years. Her writing was too woman-identified, it never quite caught on, like, say, Helen Hull’s, which was straighter. I believe she and Harriet were together for quite a while.”

  “Harriet was an actress,” Catherine said. “Ring any bells?”

  Roz picked up a photo of Harriet and looked at it thoughtfully, as if willing the photo to tell her. But Harriet, the minx, spoke only to me.

  “No, sorry,” she said, shaking her head.

  “And what about Elinor?” Catherine asked. “We haven’t a clue on her.”

  “Sarah’s papers are at NYU and Vassar, if I remember correctly. But it’s all public, not her private correspondence. Nothing about Elinor.”

  “And Lucy’s papers?” Catherine pursued. “Do you know where they are?”

  “Privately held,” she replied, shaking her head, “by a niece who won’t release them. Too embarrassing, she says. She may have even destroyed them by now. She lives upstate, in Glens Falls, and she’s a little forgetful and pretty unpleasant. Her name’s Letty King. I can give you her number.”

  Before we left, Roz xeroxed Sarah’s file for us and pulled out some others on Heterodoxy. She had, in random notes, about as much information as she had already given us about Sarah and Lucy.

  “Oh, look, their dates!” Catherine exclaimed, scribbling furiously onto the sheet Roz had given us. “Lucy Warner Weir, 1890–?, born Glens Falls, NY. Sarah Stern, 1890–1964, born New York City. This will be a big help.”

  I felt superfluous, detached, as if Catherine and Roz could have carried on for hours without me. I was, it seemed, mostly the carrier of the pictures, but then I knew I was closer to all of them than these two historians would ever be. I tucked them carefully away in my knapsack after we finished and pulled several dollars out of my wallet to stuff into their contribution jar.

  “Good luck,” Roz said, more to Catherine than to me, I thought. “Nice to meet you,” she smiled in my direction.

  “Well, there’s a real start for you,” Catherine said, on the way down in the elevator. “I knew this was the best way to begin. Don’t you feel a lot better now?”

  I nodded, only because I was relieved to see a question mark behind Lucy’s name in place of a death date.

  • • •

  When we got home, Catherine was still in her detective mode. “Don’t you want to call Letty King?” she asked, while I laid out the Cuban sandwiches we brought in for dinner. “Set up an appointment to try to see Lucy’s papers?”

  “It’s almost nine,” I said. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “How many people do you know who go to bed at nine?” she laughed, pulling out the paper with the number on it. “Come on, aren’t you dying to find out about Lucy?”

  In fact, I was, but I liked my own methods. I liked taking their pictures, having them share themselves with me little by little. I wanted this to last, to have a real relationship with all of them. I didn’t like having them become public property. These were my women; I found them. How could I explain this to Catherine?

  So I ignored her. She sighed with exasperation and dialed the number. I went into the bedroom with my sandwich and turned on the radio. I sat on the bed and leafed through the Sarah Stern file. The second-generation xeroxes were hard to read.

  Minutes later, Catherine stood in the doorway with her sandwich. “May I?” she asked, nodding toward the bed.

  “Please,” I said, setting the folder aside.

  “Susan,” she said, after several silent bites, “what’s going on?”

  “Nothing right now.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said, putting her plate to one side with less than half the sandwich eaten. I quietly finished mine. “We find out this really interesting stuff from Roz, and you hardly spoke to her. You didn’t ask a single question. Now you have another lead, and when I call, you hide in the bedroom. And you never did tell me about the hallucination, or how that shopkeeper knew your name.” Her eyes were pinning me to the bed. I felt trapped, helpless, but as usual when caught that way, I could think quickly, if not well.

  “That’s the shop I told you about, the one where I got the scrapbook,” I said.

  Her eyebrows knit together into a frown. She had a memory for detail.

  “You said that shop was downtown,” she remembered. “I’d hardly call that neighborhood downtown, even if it is ten blocks from here.”

  “I must have gotten confused,” I stammered. “I went into a shop downtown also, but I bought the scrapbook up here.”

  She shook her head. “Susan, something’s definitely wrong.” She laid a hand on mine. “Maybe you should think about therapy again.”

  I could have predicted she would say that. She had been against my quitting therapy all along. She sided with my therapist, who claimed I wandered from degree to degree to please my mother, who was a highly regarded anthropology professor. I never bought the theory. “I don’t need therapy,” I snapped, “I need to go to sleep.”

  She sighed. “Letty King wasn’t home, in case you’re wondering. I guess I’ll leave now,” she said, in such a defeated voice, that I was immediately sorry I’d been curt.

  “You don’t have to go,” I softened. I should have told her I knew she was trying to help, but that sometimes I felt like I was in a “Tough Love” program. Instead I said, “Here, I’m too tired to look through these clippings. Why don’t we get into bed and you can read one to me?”

  It was one of my favorite things to do. Catherine had a beautiful reading voice, full of expression.

  “No, I should go,” she insisted. At the door, she turned to me and looked like she was going to say something profound. “I—I’ll call you,” is what came out.

  • • •

  The xeroxes of Sarah Stern’s articles did not hold a lot of interest for me, but I scanned them anyway. First of all, reading a bad xerox is not quite the same as having the actual article, and secondly, they shed no light on her life with The Gang. But when I told Catherine about them the nex
t day, she was almost beside herself with excitement.

  “She witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist fire!” she shouted into the phone. “And wrote about it! That’s great!”

  I was hesitant to admit I couldn’t quite remember what the Triangle Shirtwaist fire was. I recalled the name, from an article Catherine had written in the feminist newspaper, but what it was exactly I couldn’t put my finger on.

  “Would you read it to me, Suze?” she asked. She only called me “Suze” when she wanted something or felt especially affectionate. I obliged.

  EYEWITNESS TO MURDER

  I was one of the lucky ones. There were one hundred and forty-six others who were not. They were mostly young immigrant women, of whom the management said, “Let ’em burn. They’re a lot of cattle anyway.” They jumped to their deaths or were swallowed up in the flames of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company on March 25, 1911.

  I was a sewing machine operator for two years. It was not difficult work, but tedious, and the pay was $3.50 a week. I was there during the 1910 strike for better working conditions and was arrested twice for provoking policemen. We did get a shorter work week and a pay increase, but our work environment remained hazardous. Workroom doors were locked to prevent us from taking breaks. Sewing machines were jammed so close together, there was little room to move, and it was impossible to hear over the din. Bins in the cutting room were filled with scraps of flammable cotton and were not emptied for weeks. That Saturday afternoon, at quitting time, one of the cutters lit a cigarette.

  Sarah’s description of the fire was sickening. She had been fortunate enough to get pushed on to one of the elevators going down. On the street, she watched as her friends and coworkers plummeted to their deaths, so panicked by the encroaching flames they hurled themselves out of the windows to escape. The sidewalk was littered with bodies, some of whom she helped to identify.