At Bryn Mawr, I take a seminar on women’s causes, descended from the work of Katharine Hepburn’s mother, a suffragist and alumna who fought for women’s rights at the turn of the century.
In one class, our professor says something that stops me in my tracks: “Feminism without racial justice is white women demanding equality within an unjust system. It’s asking to be equal oppressors.”
I sit very still. I’ve been so focused on women’s rights, my own liberation, that I haven’t thought about whose backs that liberation might be built on.
***
I join a small civil-rights group that meets off-campus in a church basement. The first night, I’m one of three white students in a room of twenty.
A young woman named Dorothy speaks about Montgomery, about Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat, about Black women walking miles to work in the cold rather than submit to the indignity of standing while white passengers sit.
She’s passionate, precise, angry. I sit in the back, trying to be invisible.
Afterward, someone asks if anyone wants to share why they’re here.
I stay silent. What would I say? That I’ve been comfortable my whole life while people suffered? That I want to help but don’t know how?
I leave without speaking to anyone. On the walk back to the apartment I feel the weight of how late I am, how white, how comfortable I’ve been.
***
I spend a week up at Harvard visiting Topper. When I arrive, he’s in the Widener Library, buried in coursework. I wait in the reading room, watching students come and go, their arms full of books. The place smells of old paper and radiator heat.
When he finally appears, he kisses me, brief, warm, and apologises without quite apologising.
“I have to finish this section,” he says. “Give me another hour?”
“Of course,” I say.
The boy would have dropped everything. Would have run out to meet me the moment I arrived. But Topper doesn’t, and I find myself… impressed? Relieved? I’m not sure which.
***
I cook supper in his apartment near campus, a spacious set of rooms with tall windows overlooking the Charles. It’s nothing elaborate, chicken, roasted vegetables, bread from the market, but I want to make things easier whilst he’s working.
When he comes home, he’s surprised.
“You didn’t have to do this,” he says, hanging his coat.
“I know. But you’re working. I wanted to help.”
He kisses my forehead. “It’s sweet. Endearing, really.”
We eat at the dining table by the window. I tell him about the seminar at Bryn Mawr, about the lectures I’ve been attending.
Topper sets down his fork. “You’re intellectualizing guilt when you should be acting on it.”
I bristle slightly. “I know that. That’s why I joined the civil-rights group.”
“Good,” he says. “Just make sure you’re not performing activism the way some of these Bryn Mawr girls do. Guilt as identity rather than commitment to change.”
He’s right, but I don’t like being told. Still, this is what I appreciate about him, he doesn’t coddle me. He challenges me to think more clearly.
“You’d never expect me to do this regularly,” I say, changing the subject. “Cook, I mean. Be that kind of girl.”
“God, no,” he says, smiling. “It would put me off if it became a habit.”
I laugh. “Good. Because there’s no chance in hell of that happening. It would be far too middle-class for me, however you choose to frame it.”
“That’s what I love about you,” he says. “You know who you are. You don’t try to please everyone.”
After supper, we wash up together. It’s easy between us, comfortable, companionable, adult. With Topper, everything makes sense.
***
Later, lying in his bed, I bring up Christmas.
“Will you come to Memphis?” I ask.
He’s quiet for a moment. “I can’t. Too much to prepare for next semester.”
“You could bring your books. Study there.”
“It’s not the same. I need the library, my notes, the quiet.”
I’m disappointed, though I know I shouldn’t be.
“You’re upset,” he says.
“A little. But I understand.”
He pulls me closer. “You’ll have fun without me. See your friends. The boy will be there.”
“Yes,” I say. “He will.”
Topper’s matter-of-fact about it, not apologetic, just practical. The boy wouldn’t be able to drop everything to see me either, not with his tour schedule. But somehow I mind more with Topper. Maybe because the boy would mind too. Would say he wished he could. Topper just accepts it.
And maybe that’s healthier. Maybe I need someone who doesn’t drop everything. Maybe that’s what growing up means.
I don’t know any more.
***
We spend the week walking through Cambridge, seeing films at the Brattle, having suppers with his friends from Harvard. They ask about Bryn Mawr, about my plans after graduation. I don’t have good answers yet.
One afternoon, Topper and I lie in bed, the winter light slanting through the window.
“You’re quiet again,” he says, running his hand along my arm.
“Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nothing important.”
But I’m thinking about the difference. With Topper, everything is clear, compatibility, ease, mutual respect, attraction. With the boy, nothing makes sense. It’s chaotic, impossible, ancient. But I can’t breathe without him.
I don’t say this. I turn towards Topper and kiss him.
***
At the train station, he walks me to the platform.
“Be safe,” he says, kissing me. “Have a good Christmas.”
“You too. Don’t work too hard.”
He laughs. “I always work too hard.”
I watch him walk away, purposeful, self-contained, steady. He doesn’t look back.
The boy always looks back.
I board the train and find my seat. As Cambridge disappears behind me, I think about what Miss Mary once told me: that you can love more than one person, but in different ways. One love makes sense. The other doesn’t.
I still don’t know which one I’m supposed to choose.
My World of Interiors 