Faith took a sip of coffee, enjoying the feeling of the 87
hot liquid traveling down her throat, past her rib cage, restoring her circulation. She held the paper cup in both hands for warmth—a blue-and-white cup with Aegean decorations, Greek keys on top and bottom.
“We’re Happy to Serve You.” All New York coffee shop paper cups looked like this. How did it start? A supplier in Athens?
“Sad that the only ones left are his cousins,” Faith commented. It was an opener.
The woman nodded vigorously and put her thick sandwich down. Under her parka—the button had urged people to continue to boycott lettuce—she’d par-tially covered the turtleneck with a loopy beige cro-cheted vest. She tossed her braid, almost long enough to sit on, back over her shoulder and started talking intently.
“When he was in college, first his mother died, then his father. Sophomore year. The year we met. He took it very hard, and later he used to say how much he regretted they never knew what a famous son they had.
‘Lorraine,’ he’d say—oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself, Karen.” She looked genuinely stricken.
Faith instantly quelled the impulse to look over her shoulder for “Karen” and instead said, “It was pretty cold outside, not the place for introductions.” The woman smiled. She’d taken her glasses off, which had steamed up when they entered the restaurant, and was wiping them with a tissue. She must have been, if not beautiful, at least pretty when she was younger. Even now with a good haircut, losing the gray, a little makeup, new clothes . . . It would be a big job.
“I’m Lorraine Fuchs.”
“Fuchs?” Faith was surprised.
88
Lorraine blushed. She was a lot better-looking with some color in her face.
“ ‘The wife of his heart.’ That’s what he always said.
Of course, we never believed in the bourgeois institution of marriage, created solely by men to ensure that property would be transferred to a legitimate male heir and to further subjugate and humiliate women.” This is going to be heavy going, Faith realized dis-mally. But “wife of his heart”—that was sweet.
“I’m so pleased that someone, especially a woman, is writing an account of Nathan’s life, and I’m happy to help in any way I can. I’ve been with him since the day we met.”
“You mean you went underground with him?”
“Of course. He needed me. Maybe I’d better start from the beginning.”
“That would be wonderful. You’re the only person I’ve interviewed so far, and it certainly seems you’ve been the closest.”
Again, it was the right thing to say. Obviously, Nathan Fox was Lorraine Fuchs’s entire reason for being—or so Faith thought.
“We met at City College. He was in my poly sci class and knew more than the professor. They were always having these big fights.” She sighed blissfully.
“Nathan started to offer his own course. He was living in a tiny apartment on Morton Street. The rest is history. We became his cadre. I don’t know why people always say the fifties were dull. Believe me, there was never a dull moment for us!”
“So you all stayed together as a social-action group?”
“Yes. For a while, we were in the Socialist Workers party, but that didn’t work out. Nathan felt the party 89
wasn’t sufficiently committed to the working class. We formed a faction and published a paper, but eventually we left. Then Nathan wrote the first book and started giving talks all over the country. He was one of the first to speak out against the war in Vietnam,” she related proudly. “You’ve probably seen him in the documen-taries. There was no one who had as powerful an effect on a crowd as Nathan.”
Faith hadn’t seen Fox in action, but she planned to soon. She’d heard about his charisma, though. The peculiarly mesmerizing, yet galvanizing, effect he’d had on great masses of people.
“Of course, my parents disapproved terribly. I’m an only child,” she said apologetically, as if her mother and father’s failure to produce a sibling were somehow her fault. “They thought Nathan was using me. That’s what my father used to say. They didn’t understand that even without Nathan, I would have chosen the life I led.” She began to eat her potato chips, one at a time.
She had long, slender fingers unadorned by any rings.
“They never cut me off. They weren’t like that, and my mother always made a nice meal for us when we’d visit, but Nathan said it made him uncomfortable to be there, even if the pot roast was good. He always had his little jokes. He told them their phone was probably tapped and to be careful. My father was pretty upset at that. It was the last time Nathan went with me to the house. Harvey was a baby, so it would have been around 1964.”
“Harvey?”
“Harvey’s my son.”
Faith swallowed hard. A piece of her pita pocket lodged in her throat and she reached for her coffee. Not only did Emma have two—what would Irwin and Mar-90
sha be, first cousins once removed? Second cousins? It was one of those things she’d never been able to keep straight—but a half brother around her own age!
“So, Arthur Quinn was wrong.” And where was Harvey? Why hadn’t he been at his father’s service?
“Harvey isn’t Nathan’s child, although Nathan was the only father figure he ever knew. Nathan worried that any child of his would be persecuted by the police, the foot soldiers of the ruling class. We made a decision not to have any children. I’m not proud of what I’m going to tell you next, but things happen in life.” And how, Faith thought.
“I left Nathan briefly at one point. I needed to get my head together. He’d become very well known. The first book had been published and he was traveling in pretty high circles. I felt excluded and wrongly assumed it meant he didn’t love me. He tried to reason with me, and deep inside I knew I was the only woman for him. My jealousy was an indication of my own weakness and lack of commitment to our goals. But I went out to California for a while and lived in a collective in San Francisco. Somehow, I got pregnant.” Somehow? Surely Lorraine wasn’t that naïve, although Faith had quickly realized that Naïveté could be Lorraine’s middle name.
“It was very difficult to get a safe abortion in those days—women had not won the right to choose, a right imperiled now. But thank goodness I didn’t. Then I wouldn’t have my Harvey. I’d have nobody now.”
“What does your son do?”
“At the moment, he’s seeking employment.” Lorraine managed to sound proud. “He’s an expert mechanic, so good that many of the employees and even the bosses where he’s worked get envious of his skills.” 91
Mouths off and gets fired was Faith’s hasty analysis.
She was beginning to feel very, very sorry for Lorraine Fuchs.
“We live in Brooklyn. My mother passed away recently and my father has been gone for some years now. I inherited the house. I know I’ll eventually have to sell it and give the money away, but it’s been wonderful having our own place. We’ve moved so often. I grew up there,” she added wistfully. “And it’s good for Harvey to have a real home. I mean to come to. He’s got an apartment with some friends. They grow up so fast.”
Before Lorraine could go off on a Harvey and mother-hood tangent, Faith slipped in a question.
“Had you been living with Nathan Fox in the city?” It would have been cramped in the studio apartment with the three of them.
“No, he was working on a very important book and wanted to be completely alone. Of course, I knew where he was. He got sick once and called me to take care of him, which I was only too happy to do, but that was just one of two times I was ever there. The second was the day before he died. When he said good-bye, how could I have known it would be forever? You’ll have to excuse me.” Tears were streaming down her face. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with another tissue.