A Woman of Intelligence by Karin Tanabe

Author:Karin Tanabe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
Published: 2021-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you’re quite different from the other women I’ve met in the party.” I was speaking quietly, even though Ava had told me when we entered the McCord Cafeteria on Ninety-seventh and Third Avenue that I didn’t have to. That after nine o’clock, the place was full of party members, men and women who stayed for hours carrying on the conversations they’d started in their meetings or dorms. Ava had struck me as an improbable communist when I’d met her with Jacob, but now that I’d been to a meeting and seen other party members in person, and hadn’t only read about their red eyes and horns and fangs in the newspapers, the impression was confirmed. They certainly did not look like the monsters the press made them out to be, but they definitely did not look rich, or like leading ladies of the silver screen à la Ava Newman. Over coffee, against my better judgment, I said as much.

“How so?” she asked, looking surprised.

Did Ava Newman really not see that her pointy bra and big pink smile stood out in an old T-shirt-and-ChapStick crowd? “I suppose the other women I’ve met—”

Ava began to laugh, showing off her straight white teeth. Even her tongue seemed to be the perfect color. I wondered if she believed the masses were entitled to the kind of orthodontia she’d likely received.

“Stop, really, please.” She held up her hand. “I didn’t mean to tease you. Trust me, Katharina, I know I don’t look like your average card-carrying party member. Is it the hair? Too blonde?” she asked, flicking it over her shoulder. “It’s God-given. I have no control.”

“Nope, it’s the money,” I retorted, finding my voice. “Not too blonde, too rich.” Even dressed down, Ava had a whiff of generations-old bank accounts about her. “You sound rich, you look rich, and you speak like—”

“I’ve just eaten a truffle?” she joked, puffing out her cheeks.

“I know rich people. I married one,” I continued. “So, if you’re not rich, you’re very good at giving the impression that you are.”

“I’m not,” she said, smiling. “My father is. House in Newport. Mayflower ancestors and all that. But he’s also a union supporter and unbeknownst to most, a communist.”

“Now this,” I said, signaling to the waitress for more coffee, “is a story I’d love to hear.”

“It’s just your average Darien, Connecticut, Methodist-mining-executive-turns-communist story. Don’t you know one or two of those?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“You should get out more.”

“That’s the understatement of the century.”

Ava eyed me curiously. “I can see why Jacob liked you so much.”

“Did he like me? I suppose he did.” I thought back to the nights—and days—we’d spent tangled in bed together. To the conversations that shifted seamlessly among English, Russian, and German, touching on food, history, the weather, the war, though never, I realized with a start, political ideology.

“Of course,” she insisted. “That was quite apparent when he saw you. He was looking at a woman he’d loved.

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