The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy by David Handler Page B

women in this country are still entry-level clerks and typists?” Typical Ruth Feingold scream of consciousness, this. Only occasionally did the woman come up for air. “Everyone acts as if we won the war. Baloney. Working women all over this nation are still being shat upon.”
    “I’ve got some bad news for you, Ruth. We’re all being shat upon.”
    She stood there in the doorway with her hands on her hips, scowling up at me. “Are you getting taller or am I getting shorter?” she demanded accusingly.
    “Never fear, I’m getting taller. Deep down inside I’m still a growing boy.”
    She let out a snort and closed the door while Lulu and I tried to maneuver our way around her in the hallway. Not so easy. Ruth Feingold was very close to being a perfectly round human organism—no more than an inch or two over five feet and no less than two hundred pounds. You didn’t know whether to go around her or over her. Not that you’d make it either way. There wasn’t so much as a hint of give to Baby Ruth. She was pure attitude—blunt and passionate and tough. A New Yorker in the truest sense of the word. She was wearing a somewhat ratty cardigan over an EARTH DAY—DO MORE IN ’74 tie-dyed T-shirt, slacks, and shearling slippers. Her shock of frizzy hair was silver now, and a pair of reading glasses was suspended from a chain atop her mountainous bosoms. But she’d lost none of her fierceness. The black eyes were still piercing. The fire still burned.
    Her apartment smelled of chicken soup and mothballs. Lulu headed straight through the kitchen into the garden out back. She can’t stand the smell of mothballs. Don’t ask me why. Ruth and I went into the living room, which seemed a lot more Upper Montclair, New Jersey, than it did West Village. There were plastic slipcovers over the somewhat assertive chintz sofa and armchairs. There was thick gold shag carpeting on the floor. There were heavy burgundy velvet drapes over the front windows, blocking out any light from the street. Several lamps were on. There were more plastic slipcovers over the lampshades. One wall was nothing but framed photographs of Ruth with Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy, with Mailer and Breslin, with Gloria and Betty and Bella and the Shirleys, MacLaine and Chisholm. There were empty spaces on the other walls, outlines of where Thor’s pictures used to hang. It was not a tidy room. Dirty dishes and newspapers were heaped on the coffee table, shoes and socks and jackets strewn about the floor.
    “As you can see, there’s a teenaged boy in the house.” She sat, puffing out her cheeks. “Plus I’m still traveling two, three days a week on the lecture circuit. That’s how I make my living now. And believe me, it hasn’t been easy lately, being a public laughingstock. Women candidates all over the country used to beg me to come speak on their behalf. Beg me. Not anymore.”
    I sat, crossing my legs. “How’s your law practice?”
    “It sucks,” she answered sharply. “Who the hell would hire me?”
    “And Arvin?”
    She hesitated, swatting at some crumbs on her sweater. “He’s been better. We all have.”
    “I wonder if I could spend a little time with him this afternoon after school.”
    “Why would you want to do that?”
    “To talk to him.”
    She bristled. “And maybe pass along a message from Thor?”
    “Not at all. I have no message.”
    “Let’s get one thing straight, Hoagy,” she said, shaking her finger at me. “I regard you as in the enemy camp. I agreed to see you out of courtesy and because you’re an old family friend and because I didn’t have any other reason to get dressed today. But Arvin is off-limits, understood?”
    “If you insist, Ruth.”
    “I do insist,” she said, struggling to get comfortable on the sofa. It wasn’t easy for her—her feet didn’t touch the floor and she wasn’t supple enough to fold her legs under her. She finally settled for a Humpty-Dumpty