Read Online The Immigrant’s Daughter by Howard Fast - Free Book Online

very lovely woman. An older man, at least ten years older than herself, used the word regal . “Regal,” he said. “I remember your mother very well. She was a regal woman — no other word to describe her — and when she and Dan Lavette entered a room, believe me, the conversation stopped.”
    Barbara got rid of her slump. She straightened her back, recalling her dance teacher at Sarah Lawrence. “Your back, ladies, and hold your damn heads as if each of you had a jug of water sitting there.” The younger men there knew that she was someone of consequence. Here was a tall, handsome older woman, whose wide blue-gray eyes suggested both wisdom and sadness. Barbara had never fully understood why an older woman should attract the eager interest of young men half her age. She wondered whether they were homosexuals. She had never been troubled by the accusation that San Francisco, her city, her beloved wonderful city that was like no other city in the world, had become a national center for homosexuals. She argued that it only gave the city more style, which it already had in excess of any other city in America.
    â€œThe devil with it,” she said to herself. “I am enjoying myself, and if I’m not happy, I’m not unhappy, and that’s a change.”
    They had read her books. Boyd once suggested that the work of an interesting good-looking woman sells better than the writing of her opposite; and Barbara smiled now at the recollection, recalling her annoyance with Boyd and her retort that he wore his male chauvinism on his sleeve. Dear, sweet man — yet always he faced her with the attitude that Barbara Lavette could do no wrong, which was perhaps the main reason she had never married him. To be tied to a cruel bastard was a bondage from which escape was at least possible; but to be married to a man who worshiped you — well, that was something else.
    â€œI read your last book,” the young man was saying. “I mean, my friends steer clear of this whole rash of new feminist books — no, I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    â€œNo, I was simply listening.”
    â€œI read them. I love women, but you’re different. When I heard you would — no, might — when I heard you might be here tonight, I was terribly excited. I read what your life has been and I expected an older woman —”
    â€œI am an older woman,” Barbara said cheerfully.
    â€œNo way. I’m not coming on — I’d like to — I don’t know how—” Then he added, “Have I offended you?”
    â€œGood heavens, no.”
    Moments later, a young woman, mid twenties, darkly good-looking and very intense, told her, “I voted for you — the first time I ever voted. I mean, I wanted so much to be like you — oh, from the first time I read something you had written, the book about France, I wanted to do the things you had done, to be just like you. And then when you ran for Congress — you don’t remember me, do you?”
    â€œI think I do, yes,” knowing how dismal it was not to be remembered. “Leaflets?” It was a shot in the dark.
    â€œYes, oh, yes, and one wonderful day when we did the fences with your poster, my boyfriend and myself, and both of us convinced that the cops were one jump behind us. Of course, they weren’t. And you will run again, won’t you?”
    â€œPerhaps, if you help me.”
    The hostess at the apartment, Birdie MacGelsie, whose husband had made many millions out of a uranium discovery, and whose own guilts had made her an eager partner of Barbara’s in Mothers for Peace, overheard the young woman’s enthusiastic political endorsement of Barbara, and got Barbara aside a while later to ask her if it was indeed true.
    â€œIs what true?”
    Small and bright-eyed, like a perky bird, Birdie whispered, “Congress. Will you be a