Hunters and Gatherers Page 10

  Isis said, “No, really. I’m glad Bernie brought it up. Maybe we should go around the room and share the expectations we’re bringing to this journey. We could use the Talking Stick.”

  “The Talking Stick!” cried the women. They were always so glad for a chance to use religious paraphernalia—the sweet enthusiasm of little girls deciding to bring out their favorite dolls. Sometimes when they did visualizations, nurturing their inner children or vision-traveling as a group to some sacred Aegean temple, they reminded Martha of children closing their eyes and playing pretend.

  Isis took the stick first. “I’m looking forward to having time to learn from Maria, to absorb her magic and wisdom and make it my own.”

  “Blessed be,” said the women.

  Isis passed the stick to Joy, who said, “I guess I already said what I thought this trip is going to be about.”

  “Say it again,” said Isis.

  “Well, about Maria,” said Joy. “And also about healing—especially for me and Diana.” Hastily she handed the Talking Stick to Bernie.

  Bernie said, “I love Tucson. And the desert. And there’s always so much to be learned from Native American cultures.”

  Diana took the Talking Stick and said, “Well. To learn from Maria. And to learn from the desert and solitude and nature.”

  She gave the stick to Freya, who said, “For me there is always the hope of finding something to use in my art.”

  When Titania got the stick, she smiled and shook her head. “I usually know what I want,” she said. “But I am trying to go slower in my life journey. I have no expectations about what I want from this trip.”

  The women applauded decorously. “Good attitude!” said Bernie.

  Sonoma took the stick and held it. There was something lethal, Martha thought, about the stubbornness of children who knew that time is their secret weapon and that they can outwait and outlast the most patient adult.

  “I don’t know,” Sonoma said. “I’m going because Mom’s going, I guess.”

  “Is that all?” said Freya. “Because if that’s all, we can find someone for you to stay with. Don’t you have any thoughts about this? Most likely you are the only lucky girl in your class missing a week of school to go to one of the most beautiful parts of America.”

  “I like school,” said Sonoma.

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard that,” said Freya. “Well, you can stay home if you wish.”

  Sonoma was silent for a few moments. “The desert could be cool,” she said. “I’ll go.”

  “Thank you kindly!” said Freya.

  When Hegwitha’s turn came, she said, “I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was hoping to discover some magic cactus or desert weed—the Native American cancer cure. Beyond that, it always helps me to get back into nature and get in touch with something that will be here after I’m gone.”

  Finally it was Martha’s turn. Did they take it for granted that she was going? It was harder for her—she wasn’t like them, a self-employed therapist or artist or writer who could just cancel clients or put the newest creative project on hold. She said, “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to expect. I mean, considering I’m not going,”

  “You’re not?” chorused the women.

  So the women had assumed she was coming along. It would seem petty and silly to say that no one had asked her.

  “The money…” murmured Martha. “Besides, I don’t know if I can take time from work…”

  “The money is a nonissue,” said Isis. “In cases of genuine need, we can draw on our Astarte Travel Scholarship Fund. And as for the time off from work…Well, the Goddess will have to arrange it!”

  But perhaps the Goddess knew that Martha was only pretending to believe in Her and therefore refused to help persuade Eleanor, Martha’s boss, to overlook the fact that Martha had six more months of hard time at Mode to be eligible for a week’s parole. Martha had never felt less divinely guided as she began her feeble petition with a half-dozen excellent reasons why Eleanor should say no.

  As Martha spoke, Eleanor’s face seemed to grow a sort of protective caul, a film that might be gruesomely torn by the slightest tic. From behind this unstable crust, Eleanor watched Martha struggling to explain why she needed to go to a private…seminar…with a Native American medicine woman. How insane of Martha to have imagined that the truth would set her free! She should have invented a sick parent or some grave condition requiring expensive diagnostic tests; she’d heard enough from Hegwitha to fake a full-body medical workup.

  In the fluorescent glare of Eleanor’s cubicle-office, Martha saw her association with the Goddess group for the walking nervous breakdown it was. The Goddess women and the Mode staff might have been warring armies or competing football teams identifiable by their uniforms: the Mode army in black miniskirts, Lycra, and clunky shoes; the Goddess team in tie-dye, paisley, beads, and tinsel headbands.

  Though someone had once assigned—and killed—the piece on Goddess worship, the young Mode staffers probably didn’t know that Goddess religion existed. Sometimes, just to experience a twinge of humiliation, Martha imagined telling the art-department girls what Isis and her friends believed. The basic concept of matriarchy might not seem so exotic: Mode, after all, was a misogynist’s nightmare of a matriarchal society. But the Goddess women would say that the editors at Mode had embraced corrupt male values, while the ancient matriarchies were based on tender loving care. Goddess civilization was nonhierarchical, whereas the Mode masthead was as stratified as the angels in Paradise Lost. In the matriarchies, you could change your job at will, and if you needed a week off to consult the oracle at Delphi…

  “Arizona?” said Eleanor. “What area code is that?”

  “What area code?” said Martha.

  “Oh, never mind,” said Eleanor. “I don’t think it’s going to work out.”

  “You’re right,” said Martha. “It’s impossible. I really shouldn’t go. It would be tough to have one less fact checker around right before the issue closes—”

  Eleanor sighed. “When I said I didn’t think it was going to work out, what I meant by it was you. I meant you, at Mode.”

  “Me?” said Martha. When had they progressed from talking about vacation to talking about her? She’d had this experience with men: some boundary was crossed and, before you knew it, an abstract conversation escalated into a personal assault. Was Eleanor firing her? Was this happening? Couldn’t they just slink back to the start of the discussion when Martha had no vacation but still had a job?

  “I’ve tried,” said Eleanor. “You have no idea how I’ve tried. To overlook your…attitude and your total…contempt. Your acting from the very first day as if you’re too good for this job. Do you think I don’t see you smirking when I ask you to check things that legally must be followed up?”

  “Legally?” said Martha. “There you go again,” Eleanor said. “I’m sorry,” said Martha.

  “I’m sorry, too,” Eleanor said. “I am. Needless to say, you can feel free to use me as a reference.”

  “STATISTICALLY,” SAID TITANIA, “DRIVING to the airport is the most dangerous part.”

  “Psychically or physically?” asked Bernie.

  “Both, obviously,” answered Starling.

  The women were stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. For half an hour they’d inched forward at an exasperating pace that they’d come to appreciate now that they had stopped moving entirely. Joy slumped down in the driver’s seat and propped her cast against the door. She slid in a tape, and country music blared until Diana turned it down.

  “In-sane!” said Hegwitha.

  “Starling, dear, how much time do we have?” Isis had asked this same question every few minutes.

  “Hours and hours,” Starling replied. “For which you can thank me.”

  “The reason driving’s more dangerous,” Joy said, “is that on the road your life is in the hands of a million assholes but when you’re finally up in the air yo
u’re just at the mercy of one.”

  “That’s if you just count the pilot and not the million assholes who built the plane,” said Titania.

  Joy said, “Or if you count the lightning or solar flares that can hit it.” She turned the music up again.

  Diana jabbed the button that lowered the volume, then said, “Fuck you, Joy. Just fuck you.”

  Isis said, “We have to make an effort not to let ourselves get sucked into the negativity of being stuck in traffic.”

  Bernie said, “I think we all know that Diana’s anger is not about the traffic.”

  Earlier, as each woman entered the van, Joy had announced that she and Diana had broken up last night but had both decided to come on the trip because they hadn’t yet figured out who they were in their separate lives.

  Now Joy said, “I think we can handle this if we stay upfront and center about it.”

  Isis said, “With the help of the Goddess.”

  “Of course,” Diana said.

  Martha had learned to ignore the sounds of Joy and Diana bickering, the way children screen out their parents’ front-seat quarrels when they are stuck in traffic, or lost. But their sniping wasn’t what Martha wanted to hear now, during what might prove to be her last few hours on earth.

  Though Martha hadn’t traveled much, she considered herself a confident flier, meaning she didn’t dig in her heels and refuse to get on the plane. But at some point during every trip to the airport, she knew she was going to die. Were the others thinking this, too? It would have seemed hostile to ask. Instead she tried to calm herself with Titania’s statistic: if she survived this car trip, the riskiest part was behind her. But how could any sensible person believe that sitting still in traffic was as perilous as flying thirty thousand feet up in the air?

  Martha said, “Do you think they mean that driving in general is more hazardous than flying, or do they mean driving to the airport in particular? Is driving to the airport more dangerous than normal driving?”

  “I hope to hell it isn’t,” said Hegwitha, who along with Martha, was riding on the floor in back, hunkered down with the luggage. It was the only way that all of them and their possessions could fit into Joy’s van. Freya and Sonoma had elected to meet them at the airport.

  “Me, too,” said Martha. “Or we’re dead meat. This has got to be the most unsafe place in the van.”

  “We’re lucky to be here,” Hegwitha reminded her. “We should be thanking the Goddess that we were invited along.”

  After that Martha was unable to think of anything to say.

  It was weirdly intimate, riding with the luggage. Just seeing the women’s baggage had seemed deeply revealing, rather like the first time one sees a friend in a bathing suit, exposing so much more than flesh. The choice of a suit—or a suitcase—hinted at a secret life involving matters like self-image, money, and shopping decisions. Each woman had had to decide how she wanted to carry her clothes. And what a range there was, from Joy’s sturdy all-terrain camping gear to Titania’s elegant satchels! Even stalled in traffic, Martha found this touching, and through a haze of goodwill she heard Isis clap her hands.

  “Let’s chant,” Isis said, “and direct our Goddess energy toward getting this traffic moving.”

  The women closed their eyes, and a soft “ma ma ma” began, a whirring that turned into cheers when Joy hit the gas. Soon they started seeing signs with heartening pictographs of airplanes. They had crossed a subtle divide beyond which their anxiety about flying was less severe than their fear of missing the exit. In unison they read the lists matching airlines with terminals and at last called out triumphantly, “Terminal number 3!”

  “Lucky number,” said Hegwitha.

  As they pulled onto the ramp leading to the departure area, Titania said, “I’m glad they no longer have curbside check-in. That’s one thing for which we can thank Saddam Hussein. You felt silly for not surrendering your baggage. But you knew there wasn’t a chance of your stuff making it onto the plane.”

  Starling said, “No one’s luggage is going to get lost.” She herself had surprisingly good bags—handsome, burnished brown leather, masculine and expensive. Starling was full of surprises today. It was impressive to witness the crisp precision with which she directed Joy up to the curb and supervised the unloading of the van.

  From the start it was understood that Starling would not only make the travel arrangements but carry—and be responsible for—everyone’s tickets. She liked to say she had been raised for this; she was a military brat. And her competence let Isis, normally so in control, slip into the role of a dreamy child on a family vacation.

  Now Commander Starling steered them through the gantlet of distracted travelers and up to the ticket counter, with its long lines of nervous wrecks and dispirited foot-draggers.

  “Relax,” she said. “We have to wait for Joy to park the car.”

  “How much time do we have?” asked Isis.

  “Hours and hours,” said Starling. “We’ve got it made. Where are Freya and Sonoma?”

  At last they reached the counter, and Starling surrendered their tickets while they placed their luggage on the scale. A woman with owlish spectacles typed something into the computer, waited, frowned at the monitor, typed more, frowned again.

  Starling said, “Is there a problem?”

  “Not really,” said the woman, furiously typing. When the screen scrolled up, she said, “Damn,” and then, “Excuse me a minute.” Clasping their tickets against her chest, she vanished through a door. A man behind them in line said loudly, “Jesus Christ, can you believe this?”

  “Move it, jerk,” Joy said, pushing through to join them.

  “You made it!” said Bernie. “Wonderful!”

  “Blessed be,” said the women.

  “Now all we need is Freya and Sonoma,” Starling said.

  “And our tickets back,” said Isis.

  Just then, the ticket agent reappeared, clearly relieved but feeling that it would be unprofessional to show it. “It’s all straightened out. Your flight leaves from Terminal 4.”

  “Terminal 4?” said Starling. “This is Terminal 3.”

  “I’m aware of that,” said the woman. “It’s just one terminal over. You can hop the shuttle bus that runs every ten minutes.”

  Diana moaned. “I didn’t see a Terminal 4 when we came into the airport.”

  Joy said, “They wouldn’t be sending us to Terminal 4 if there wasn’t a Terminal 4.”

  Bernie said, “Couldn’t the plane just stop by here on its way out and pick us up?”

  “This is outrageous!” said Starling.

  “It’s a charter flight,” the woman explained. Was there disdain in her voice? It was so hard to distinguish contempt from ordinary business manners.

  “I’m exhausted,” said Diana, “and the trip hasn’t even begun.”

  “It’s begun,” said Bernie. “Be with us here now.”

  “Maybe if you’d eaten breakfast, Diana,” said Joy, “you wouldn’t be so wiped out.”

  “You’re not my mother,” Diana said. “You’re not even my lover.”

  “Would you stop saying that?” said Joy.

  “Excuse me,” said the ticket clerk. “Other people are waiting.” Starling moved the group to one side, where they stood, looking worriedly for the exit.

  “Do you think this would be happening if we were a group of men?” demanded Hegwitha. “Do you think for one minute that they would be treating men like this?”

  “Oh, dear,” said Isis. “This doesn’t give me a good feeling about the trip.”

  As they shuffled toward the door, Joy said, “There’s not a chance in hell that Freya and Sonoma will find us.”

  Titania said, “If Freya can direct the transportation of a major installation from Long Island City to Helsinki, she can get her daughter and a suitcase to the right terminal at La Guardia.”

  The shuttle bus stopped and picked them up. None of the women sat down.

&n
bsp; “Terminal 4!” said the driver, as he let them off in front of what appeared to be a construction site.

  “Is this a passenger terminal?” said Bernie.

  “I knew it,” said Starling. “That bastard travel agent booked us on a cargo plane.”

  “UPS,” Hegwitha said giddily. “We’re flying UPS!”

  “In fucking puppy carriers,” said Joy.

  It did seem to be a passenger terminal of a stripped-down, no-frills sort: no carpet, no banks of phones, no dim bar full of shady characters—nor the cheering distraction of newsstands and souvenir shops.

  “Where do we buy magazines?” cried Titania. “I can’t fly without magazines!”

  “There’ll be magazines on the plane,” Starling said uncertainly.

  “The Sears Roebuck catalogue,” said Joy. “On a string in the crapper.”

  Hand-written signs directed them through labyrinthine half-finished corridors, snowy with Sheetrock dust. For once, Hegwitha left Martha’s side to walk up ahead with Diana. As they crossed a rubble-strewn lobby, Martha found herself beside Titania.

  “Observe,” Titania said. “None of the men give us a second glance. A group of women traveling together is not of interest, except, I suppose, a group of hookers or movie stars or models. A twelve-thousand-dollar face-lift for nothing—oh, it’s so unfair!”

  But, in fact, men were looking at them and immediately looking away, which was arguably worse than not being noticed at all. Was it the fact that they were a group, or was it the kind of group they were: instantly recognizable mental-case feminist man-haters? Martha felt a sheepish desire to distance herself from these women—not that she drew such lustful stares when she was on her own.

  Titania said, “Luckily, you are still too young to know how gruesome it is. I don’t understand women who aren’t feminists. Only a cretin would fail to notice the raw deal we get from brain-dead males who assume we’re stupid because if we had any brains at all we’d figure out how to have a penis. Unless we rub our tits in their face and then they decide we’re brighter than they’d thought. I know women aren’t perfect. But compared with what men do to women, the worst things we do to each other don’t amount to a hill of beans.”