were becoming a little pudgy. "You should give up pastry," she said. Her fingers were long and slender and had great strength. They could search out the imperfections in muscle fiber and knead them out like ... like a skilled pastry maker working a dough until it was silken. What had she meant, "You could call me"? Her scent was still in his nose. But he should not be thinking these things, because his wife's fingers felt as if they could penetrate his thoughts. It was possible that it was her hands with which he had first fallen in love. Even the first afternoon on Thirteenth Street. Now, only four years and a daughter later, he was lying on her table analyzing someone else's phrase, "You could call me."
Sonia was explaining progress on her play about Emma Goldman, the Lithuanian-born, early-twentieth-century American anarchist, and Margarita Maza, wife of the nineteenth-century Mexican leader Benito Juarez. Emma is completely opposed to property. Margarita does not oppose it. She just thinks it is wrong that she has it and most Mexicans don't. "But that was exactly Emma's point, you see? That was why she called property robbery. Because it was the product of all the people who had none, you see?"
Only one person she had met really saw it. Her brother-in-law, Mordy, would eagerly talk to her about it. But he told her, "I think they are from different latitudes but similar longitudes, which is always what happens to relationships. Margarita needs to get on Emma's longitude. You need the commonality of longitudes." And thus far, she was thrilled to have such an insight. But from there he went for a very long time into his theory of "longitudinal separation," and Sonia had to admit that whatever it was that Mordy was trying to say, they were on different plays.
Mordy, after spending his undergraduate years on electronic music, earned two graduate degrees: one in Western philosophy and one in biochemistry. He thought the biochemistry work would lead to skills in designer drugs. But that degree proved disappointing. The Western philosophy degree, on the other hand, he felt had paid off
The only other person who liked to talk to Sonia about her play was Arnie. Arnie loved Emma Goldman and, though he knew nothing of Juarez or his wife, could talk for hours about what Emma thought. And miraculously, one afternoon as she walked up Avenue A, Arnie presented Sonia with a copy of Living My Life, Emma Goldman's autobiography It was a hardback edition published by an anarchist press in the 1930s and found by Arnie on a curb of Essex Street along with an electric fan that no longer worked. The frontispiece was a black-and-white photo of a severe-looking, short-haired woman with black, round glasses frames holding thick lenses behind which two magnified, worried eyes appeared to stare out at two different angles. For a second, Sonia was surprised that this woman looked nothing like Ruth, whose eyes were glowing with passion and whose face was soft and feminine. Only the thick black eyebrows looked similar. Sonia read the opening:
It was the 15th of August 1889, the day of my arrival in New York City. I was twenty years old. All that had happened in my life until that time was now left behind me, cast off like a worn out garment.
A worn out garment. Sonia pondered the phrase. She, too, only a few years earlier, not quite one hundred years after Emma, and on an August day as well, maybe even the fifteenth, had arrived in New York with the exact same feelings. Not twenty but over thirty, she too was casting off her past and beginning a new life—as a playwright. But then she did something Emma wouldn't. "Marriage and love have nothing in common," Emma once wrote. Emma had been married but did not make the mistake of prolonging it, and the divorce was the occasion for her moving to New York to begin anew. Sonia had not divorced but had left behind a confining relationship. And then in her new life, she got married! Then Sonia thought of
Sonia was explaining progress on her play about Emma Goldman, the Lithuanian-born, early-twentieth-century American anarchist, and Margarita Maza, wife of the nineteenth-century Mexican leader Benito Juarez. Emma is completely opposed to property. Margarita does not oppose it. She just thinks it is wrong that she has it and most Mexicans don't. "But that was exactly Emma's point, you see? That was why she called property robbery. Because it was the product of all the people who had none, you see?"
Only one person she had met really saw it. Her brother-in-law, Mordy, would eagerly talk to her about it. But he told her, "I think they are from different latitudes but similar longitudes, which is always what happens to relationships. Margarita needs to get on Emma's longitude. You need the commonality of longitudes." And thus far, she was thrilled to have such an insight. But from there he went for a very long time into his theory of "longitudinal separation," and Sonia had to admit that whatever it was that Mordy was trying to say, they were on different plays.
Mordy, after spending his undergraduate years on electronic music, earned two graduate degrees: one in Western philosophy and one in biochemistry. He thought the biochemistry work would lead to skills in designer drugs. But that degree proved disappointing. The Western philosophy degree, on the other hand, he felt had paid off
The only other person who liked to talk to Sonia about her play was Arnie. Arnie loved Emma Goldman and, though he knew nothing of Juarez or his wife, could talk for hours about what Emma thought. And miraculously, one afternoon as she walked up Avenue A, Arnie presented Sonia with a copy of Living My Life, Emma Goldman's autobiography It was a hardback edition published by an anarchist press in the 1930s and found by Arnie on a curb of Essex Street along with an electric fan that no longer worked. The frontispiece was a black-and-white photo of a severe-looking, short-haired woman with black, round glasses frames holding thick lenses behind which two magnified, worried eyes appeared to stare out at two different angles. For a second, Sonia was surprised that this woman looked nothing like Ruth, whose eyes were glowing with passion and whose face was soft and feminine. Only the thick black eyebrows looked similar. Sonia read the opening:
It was the 15th of August 1889, the day of my arrival in New York City. I was twenty years old. All that had happened in my life until that time was now left behind me, cast off like a worn out garment.
A worn out garment. Sonia pondered the phrase. She, too, only a few years earlier, not quite one hundred years after Emma, and on an August day as well, maybe even the fifteenth, had arrived in New York with the exact same feelings. Not twenty but over thirty, she too was casting off her past and beginning a new life—as a playwright. But then she did something Emma wouldn't. "Marriage and love have nothing in common," Emma once wrote. Emma had been married but did not make the mistake of prolonging it, and the divorce was the occasion for her moving to New York to begin anew. Sonia had not divorced but had left behind a confining relationship. And then in her new life, she got married! Then Sonia thought of
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