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She was lying in her bed with the blinds half-closed. As always, there was the mechanical tick, tick, tick of the grandfather clock, and I imagined the little teeth in the mechanism biting off a tiny piece of time with each inexorable movement.
“Where are you going?” my mother asked. Her voice, once mellifluous, was reduced to a needle scratch.
“To the library,” I said, beaming. I was dying to tell her my secret.
“That’s nice,” she said. “You look pretty.” She took a heavy breath and continued. “I like your ribbons. Where did you get them?”
“From your old sewing box.”
She nodded. “My father brought those ribbons from Belgium.”
I touched the ribbons, unsure if I should have taken them.
“No, no,” my mother said. “You wear them. That’s what they’re there for, right? Besides,” she repeated, “you look pretty.”
She began to cough. I dreaded the sound—high and weak, it was more like the futile gasping of a helpless animal than an actual cough. She’d coughed for a year before they discovered she was sick. The nurse came in, pulling the top off a syringe with her teeth while tapping my mother’s forearm with two fingers.
“There you go, dear, there you go,” she said reassuringly, smoothly inserting the needle. “Now you’ll sleep. You’ll sleep for a bit and when you wake up, you’ll feel better.”
My mother looked at me and winked. “I doubt it,” she said as she began to drift away.
I got on my bike and rode the five miles down Main Street to the library. I was late, and as I pedaled, an idea began to form in my head that Mary Gordon Howard was going to rescue me.
Mary Gordon Howard was going to recognize me.
Mary Gordon Howard was going to see me and know, instinctively, that I, too, was a writer and a feminist, and would someday write a book that would change the world.
Standing atop my pedals to pump more furiously, I had high hopes for a dramatic transformation.
When I reached the library, I threw my bike into the bushes and ran upstairs to the main reading room.
Twelve rows of women sat on folding chairs. The great Mary Gordon Howard, the lower half of her body hidden behind a podium, stood before them. She appeared as a woman dressed for battle, in a stiff suit the color of armor enhanced by enormous shoulder pads. I caught an under-current of hostility in the air, and slipped behind a stack.
“Yes?” she barked at a woman in the front row who had raised her hand. It was our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Agnosta. “What you’re saying is all very well and good,” Mrs. Agnosta began carefully. “But what if you’re not unhappy with your life? I mean, I’m not sure my daughter’s life should be different than mine. In fact, I’d really like my daughter to turn out just like me
.”
Mary Gordon Howard frowned. On her ears were enormous blue stones. As she moved her hand to adjust her earring, I noticed a rectangular diamond watch on her wrist. Somehow, I hadn’t expected Mary Gordon Howard to be so bejeweled. Then she lowered her head like a bull and stared straight at Mrs. Agnosta as if she were about to charge. For a second, I was actually afraid for Mrs. Agnosta, who no doubt had no idea what she’d wandered into and was only looking for a little culture to enhance her afternoon.
“That, my dear, is because you are a classic narcissist,” Mary Gordon Howard declared. “You are so in love with yourself, you imagine that a woman can only be happy if she is ‘just like you.’ You are exactly what I’m talking about when I refer to women who are a hindrance to the progress of other women.”
Well, I thought. That was probably true. If it were up to Mrs. Agnosta, all women would spend their days baking cookies and scrubbing toilets.
Mary Gordon Howard looked around the room, her mouth drawn into a line of triumph. “And now, if there are no more questions, I will be happy to sign your books.”
There were no more questions. The audience, I figured, was too scared.
I got in line, clutching my mother’s copy of The Consensus to my chest. The head librarian, Ms. Detooten, who I’d known since I was a kid, stood next to Mary Gordon Howard, handing her books to sign. Mary Gordon Howard sighed several times in annoyance. Finally she turned to Ms. Detooten and muttered, “Unenlightened housewives, I’m afraid.” By then I was only two people away. “Oh no,” I wanted to protest. “That isn’t true at all.” And I wished I could tell her about my mother and how The Consensus had changed her life.
Ms. Detooten shrank and, flushed with embarrassment, turned away and spotted me. “Why, here’s Carrie Bradshaw,” she exclaimed in a too-happy, nudging voice, as if I were a person Mary Gordon Howard might like to meet.
My fingers curled tightly around the book. I couldn’t seem to move the muscles in my face, and I pictured how I must look with my lips frozen into a silly, timid smile.
The Gorgon, as I’d now begun to think of her, glanced my way, took in my appearance, and went back to her signing.
“Carrie’s going to be a writer,” Ms. Detooten gushed. “Isn’t that so, Carrie?”
I nodded.
