Mary Gaitskill - Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Justine left the library feeling as though she had been reading one of Granite’s novels — the proud declarations, the dedicated followers, the triumphant public appearances, the controversy, the feuds, the denunciations, the main character storming from the room with her cape streaming from her shoulders after a violent confrontation with archenemy Austin Heller.

She began getting answers to her ads. The voices sounded like young, cramp-shouldered people taking their lunch breaks in cafeterias lit by humming fluorescent lights. She pictured women with sad hair in flower-print dresses and men with fleshy chests and hands. They all described what Granite had done for them, how she had made them value their lives, how she had inspired them to strive for the best they were capable of, whether as secretaries or as engineers. She made appointments to interview some of them, including one fellow who claimed to be a “Definitist intellectual.”

Meanwhile, Katya, the heroine of The Last Woman Alive , had refused to join the Collectivist party, and had subsequently been thrown out of the academy, where she had been studying higher mathematics. She had been forced into an affair with the philosophically wrong Captain Dagmarov in order to save the life of her lover, Rex.

A week after the dissemination of the cards, she received a call from someone with a high-pitched voice that reminded her of a thin stalk with a rash of fleshy bumps. His name was Bernard, and, in addition to giving her the address of a study group that he attended in Brooklyn, he supplied her with the phone number of Dr. Wilson Bean, Granite’s “intellectual protégé.”

Bean’s voice sounded as if it were being dragged along the bottom of an old tin tub. He didn’t want to be interviewed; he spent minutes castigating the press, which he said had “crucified” him in the past, yet he continued talking. She pursued him down the center of his defense with the laser of her cold, clear voice, and she could feel herself contacting him. Grudgingly, with a lot of rasping around the bottom of the old tub, he agreed to talk to her again after she’d read The Bulwark and The Gods Disdained . He also advised her to attend the annual Definitist conference in Philadelphia, which would take place in a few weeks.

She hung up elated; the phone rang immediately. It was another Granite fan, a woman with a voice that, although riddled with peculiarity and tension, stroked Justine along the inside of her skull in a way that both repelled and attracted her. She said her name was Dorothy Never and she sounded like a nut. She’d been calling for days, she said, and she was so glad to have finally gotten through. Justine, trying to infuse her voice with seriousness and authority, was genuinely excited to hear that she had been a member of the original Definitist movement and had personally known Anna Granite, Beau Bradley, and Wilson Bean. She seemed not only willing but pathetically eager to be interviewed. They arranged a time, and Justine hung up full of amazement at the desire some people have for attention and publicity.

In the meantime, Katya had perished on an ice floe in an effort to escape to America, Captain Dagmarov had killed himself on realizing that he was philosophically in error, and Rex, having been broken by the collectivist society around him, was writing pornography for a living.

Justine Shade’s voice sounded different in person than it had on the phone. Floating from the receiver, it had been eerie but purposeful, moving in a line towards a specific destination. In my living room, her words formed troublesome shapes of all kinds that, instead of projecting into the room, she swallowed with some difficulty. She sat in the least comfortable chair, blinking frequently under the squalid intensity of city sunlight pressing through my curtainless windows. She glanced surreptitiously at the horrified woman on the gold cover of Night Duty , the paperback on my coffee table. She picked at the dainty fried snacks I had placed between her seat and mine as I traveled from kitchen to living room arranging our tea things.

“I’ve been looking forward to this,” I said. “I was dying to meet someone interested in Granite now, when it’s no longer fashionable. Someone who isn’t a zealot of some kind.”

“Well you realize I’m not a Definitist,” she said. She placed her narrow hands on the top knee of her crossed legs and tilted her small head away from her body, giving herself a neurotically asymmetrical but graceful appearance. She was a pretty woman, once you got used to her. Her skin was very white and clear, her small, finely shaped skull was set off by pale blond short-cropped hair. Her prominent cheekbones, strong chin, and high forehead complemented a face marred only by thin, tight lips and huge black glasses that sat crookedly on her small nose. I was a little disappointed by her. I had imagined a mature and handsome woman wearing a tailored gray suit and black stiletto heels carrying a small tape recorder. Justine dressed like a college kid: tight jeans, pointy red shoes, and a T-shirt with an indecipherable picture and the words “Girl World” on it. She held an already scrawled-in notebook on her knotted-up lap. She’d said that she’d written mainly for Urban Vision , and it was entirely believable to me that a Vision writer would look like this.

“But you seem to take Definitism seriously,” I said.

“Oh, I do. Very seriously.” Her wide gray eyes focused on me intently.

“Well, that means you respect it, and that’s enough recommendation for me.” I sat on the generous expanse of white-cushioned couch and spread my floor-length, bright-flowered dress around me. “Shall we start?”

“Okay.” She smiled as this quasi word came from her mouth like a bubble that floated into the room and disappeared. “When did you first encounter Definitism?”

“As a teenager, when I read The Bulwark . I would say from about the tenth page on, it became the most important influence in my life — certainly the only positive influence.” I paused. “Would you like tea?”

“Not now.” She glanced with suppressed interest at my tea set. “Later I will.”

“Let me explain what I meant by what I just said. I was a sexually abused child. I was forced to have an incestuous affair with my father, starting at age fourteen.”

Her blank face registered nothing, but I could sense the telescope of her attention frantically adjust its gauge to examine my statement. “Have I upset you by telling you that?”

“No. No. I mean, yes. I mean it upsets me that it happened to you, but it doesn’t shock me. I know it’s very common. In fact, I was molested as a child.” Slight pause, slight body recession. “When I was five years old, by a friend of my father’s.”

“Oh God.”

“It didn’t happen that often though. Maybe three or four times.” Her face retained its serene surface. “I know that’s not as awful as with your father because—”

“Stop. Don’t deny your own experience. It’s just not the kind of thing you can quantify. Any therapist will tell you that.” I felt my face relaxing towards her in what I hoped was a pleasant way.

“I know, it’s just that I can’t imagine it happening over a prolonged period of time with your father.” Her eyes flickered from me to the notebook; she paused, cheap ballpoint in mid-flight. Her attention zoomed at me like a bat. She tilted forward, her face shaded with melancholy puzzlement. What an odd little creature she was. “What I’m wondering about though, is. you know I’m writing an article for publication. Are you sure you want to be talking about this?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ve done it before. I’ve been interviewed often in connection with Granite. A long time ago, but I’m quite used to dealing with it. I bring it up because it’s important in connection with how Granite affected my life. And it’s important to me to speak openly about it. But thank you. No one else in your position has ever thought to ask.”