Curtis Sittenfeld - Eligible

“Liz?” Approaching from a door near the stage was a young woman in a charcoal pantsuit. “I’m Valerie Wright. Kathy de Bourgh is ready to see you.”

IN THE GREENROOM, Kathy de Bourgh was eating an arugula salad. She stood to firmly shake Liz’s hand and said, “I apologize for keeping you waiting, but my dog has keratitis and I was touching base with the vet.”

“I’m so sorry,” Liz said. She knew that Kathy de Bourgh was the owner of a Pekingese named Button, though Liz did not mention this knowledge because of the fine line between due diligence and creepiness.

As they sat, Kathy de Bourgh smiled and said, “Now that we’ve both apologized within the first thirty seconds of our conversation about women and power, shall we begin?” While Liz set her two digital recorders on the glass tabletop and turned them on, Kathy de Bourgh added, “You might not know this, but I myself was once a writer for Mascara. ”

“Oh, it’s one of our claims to fame,” Liz said. She was reassured that Kathy de Bourgh knew what publication she was being interviewed for; regularly, very famous people didn’t.

“That was roughly fifteen thousand years ago,” Kathy de Bourgh said. “During the Pleistocene epoch.”

Liz said, “Knowing you’d worked for the magazine was the main reason I was excited to get a job there.”

Kathy de Bourgh laughed. “Liz, flattery will get you everywhere.”

As Valerie Wright and two other women whose identities never became clear to Liz sat in chairs against the wall and typed on their smartphones, Liz asked Kathy de Bourgh about feminism’s present and past, about whether its current prominence in popular culture struck her as meaningful or fleeting, about reproductive freedom and equal compensation, race and gender, mentoring, ambition, likability, and whether having it all was a realistic possibility or a phrase that ought to be expurgated from the English language. Usually in interviews, every few minutes the subject would say something articulate or insightful enough that Liz knew she could use it in her article, and she’d feel a little lift, or maybe relief; with Kathy de Bourgh, every sentence of every answer was usable. And the responses weren’t all ones Liz had heard before.

As they reached the end of the allotted twenty minutes, which Liz had high hopes of exceeding, she said, “You didn’t marry until you were sixty-seven years old. Was that due to the difficulty of finding a spouse who would treat you as an equal partner?”

Kathy de Bourgh smiled again. “Are you married?” she asked.

Et tu, Kathy de Bourgh? Liz thought and shook her head. She knew that Kathy de Bourgh’s husband, a renowned architect, had died of an aneurysm only three years after their wedding.

“I considered getting married many times,” Kathy de Bourgh said. “I certainly had my share of suitors. But—” She paused. “How can I describe this?” Liz remained quiet — remaining quiet was the most reliable tool in her interviewing kit — and Kathy de Bourgh said, “With all the men I dated before Benjamin, there was some degree of performance involved. Even when those men and I had a lot of chemistry, or maybe especially then, it was like we were performing our chemistry either for an audience or just for each other. I was engaged once to a very good-looking man”— Indeed, Liz thought, to the attorney general of New York —“but eventually I realized that when I was with him, I was always trying to present the most cheerful, entertaining, attractive version of myself, instead of just being myself. It was a lot of effort, especially over time. Whereas with Benjamin, it never felt like people saw us as a golden couple, and it wasn’t how we saw ourselves. We knew each other for ten years before we became involved. During that time, I gradually realized he was easy to be around and easy to talk to. We once traveled together to China as part of a delegation — not just us, but about twenty people — and even when the bus was late or our luggage got lost, he was very unflappable, very considerate of others. That probably doesn’t sound romantic, does it? It was real, though — we got a clear view of each other. Whereas when I dated other men, whether it was leading protests or attending parties at the White House, there was a fantasy aspect to our time together that I don’t think prepared us for some of the mundane daily struggles life has in store.”

As Kathy de Bourgh took a sip of water, Liz said, “So the lesson is—?”

Kathy de Bourgh set her glass down. “Benjamin was very nurturing, by which I don’t mean that he talked extensively about his feelings. He didn’t. But he looked out for me in a steady, ongoing way, and I hope I did the same for him.”

“Kathy, you have a three o’clock with George Schiff,” Valerie Wright said, standing. “Liz, we need to wrap it up. So glad we could make this happen.”

Ignoring Valerie, Kathy de Bourgh said, “There’s a belief that to take care of someone else, or to let someone else take care of you — that both are inherently unfeminist. I don’t agree. There’s no shame in devoting yourself to another person, as long as he devotes himself to you in return.”

Within thirty seconds, Liz knew, she’d be back on the other side of the greenroom door. She reached for her recorders but didn’t turn them off, in case Kathy de Bourgh was about to share any final pearls of wisdom. Instead, Kathy de Bourgh hugged her, and Liz tried to think who in her life liked her enough that Liz could later make them listen to the barely audible rustle of being embraced by the leader of second-wave feminism. Jane would listen to humor Liz, though she wouldn’t really be interested.

“Be well,” Kathy de Bourgh said.

“WOW,” JASPER SAID when Liz answered her cellphone. “I’m pleasantly surprised you picked up.”

It was evening, and Liz was lying in her hotel room bed in Houston, watching a mediocre movie she’d seen in the theater in high school and thinking, I’m in love with you. I can’t stop thinking about you.

She said to Jasper, “Did you pee on your writing professor’s desk?”

The silence that followed — it lasted for more time than would have been necessary to express reflexive bewilderment. At last, Jasper said, “I assume Darcy has been putting poison in your ear again.”

“I have a right to know what really happened.”

“If I could go back in time, are there things I’d do differently? Without question.”

“What made you think that was okay?”

“Besides ten beers?” Jasper seemed to be waiting for her to laugh, and when she didn’t, he said, “It was stupid and juvenile. There’s no denying that. But I swear it wasn’t racist. Tricia Randolph could have been blue, green, or polka-dotted, and I would have disliked her just the same.”

Jasper was reminding her of someone, Liz thought, and after a second, she realized it was her mother. She said, “Did you ruin the professor’s computer? You must have.” Jasper said nothing, and Liz added, “I can’t believe you peed on a writer’s computer.”

“Don’t tell me you never did anything dumb when you were twenty-two.”

“I loved you so much.” Liz didn’t raise her voice; she felt more sad than outraged. “From the time we met — I would have done anything for you. I thought you were so smart and cute and funny, and I was so flattered that you respected me and wanted to be friends. But how could you have strung me along all these years? If my excuse is a misguided crush, what’s yours?”

“Nin—” Jasper said, and his pained tone was a reminder that, however he had transgressed, he hadn’t done so entirely callously. His affection for her was not fake; it just was partial. Or perhaps it was fake, he was faking emotion now, and he had a personality disorder; but between these possibilities, she preferred to see him as inadequate rather than clinically diagnosable. “I’m going to do better,” he said. “Starting now, I’m getting my act together. Don’t give up on me.”