A Small Price to Pay

A new installment of Hunted, an autobiographical account of God’s action in the life of a Vietnam War era radical activist. New to the series? This introduction provides context for the events described here. An index of other episodes, updated monthly, is also available.

In the fall of 1971, when Eileen and I moved into our first apartment in Atlanta, you would not have thought of us as a couple headed for trouble. We had jobs. We had friends in the community. We had our cause—to make the world better through armed communist revolution. In January we would go back to college, and within a few years we would finish our degrees and start teaching careers.

The future was bright. We believed naively that we had created this new world all by ourselves. What we created we could surely sustain. The way to do that, we decided, was to get married.

It did not seem like a momentous decision, just the obvious next step for a couple living together. Most of our comrades who had steady relationships either were already married or expected to be soon. Creating a classless society was not something you could pursue without giving your life to it. It felt natural to commit ourselves to each other in the same way.

The only really difficult part about marriage, we thought at first, would be telling our parents. Weddings were a political minefield for activists of our generation. For the most part parents didn’t approve of our radical ways. As long as we were single, there was hope we would come to our senses. Marriage, though, eroded this hope by reinforcing the course of life we had chosen, especially if the spouse had chosen it too.

Our parents were more vocal than some others. Eileen’s mother feared I would lead her into terrible trouble—violent protest, arrest, a stain on her record. My father was furious that I’d dropped out of an Ivy League college and that I’d pledged my support to a group that was trying to tear down the country. Since I’d gone back to school in Rhode Island, organizing for revolution, he bitterly resented paying tuition bills and probably wouldn’t have but for my mother’s insistence.

It didn’t help that Eileen’s mother was wretchedly poor and my father was vice president of a major life insurance company. Both feared the worst from this difference in social class: Eileen’s mother, that I would abandon Eileen at the first sign of trouble, and my father that she was manipulating my affection to improve her social position.

It also didn’t help that later that fall, a month or so after the marriage decision, Eileen learned she was pregnant. Because of our precarious circumstances, we decided Eileen should have an abortion. In those pre-Roe years, abortion was illegal in most states; we made arrangements to travel to New York early in the new year. This was a subject we shared only with a few very close comrades whose help we sought.

It’s hard to imagine less favorable circumstances for a marriage announcement. We decided to save the news for our Christmas visit. Both families had been urging us to visit then. The two of us could break the news to each family separately. A united front, we expected, would work in our favor. The holiday spirit might even tamp down repercussions.

In late December, we traveled north in the little Volkswagen beetle that we had bought at a discount from one of our comrades. Our first stop was Providence, a tiny third-floor apartment where Eileen’s mother and younger sister lived. Ma stared incredulously as we recited our plans. When the reality sank in, she shook her head slowly, smiling the anxious, skeptical smile that played continually over her lips when she was nervous.

Turning to me, she asked tremulously, “Have you told your parents?”

Of course I hadn’t. We’d agreed Ma should be told first. She’d be far less likely to call and warn my parents than vice versa. There was little she could say that would threaten us. She could barely make ends meet with Eileen’s younger sister living at home, so we did not expect any financial support from her. Because Eileen’s father had died in a work accident, her college tuition and fees were paid by Railroad Retirement and would continue to be after we married.

I explained that we were driving up to see my parents that evening. We’d tell them at dinner. The headshaking continued. She knew, or thought she knew, what their answer would be. I tried again.

“I have no idea how they’ll react. That’s there problem, not mine. If they don’t want to be involved in the wedding, they can stay home. It’ll make everything that much easier.”

My bravado made no impression at all. I wasn’t surprised. She’d never seen me with my father. The two of us had had some interesting arguments over the past couple of years. Looking back, I’m not sure I can honestly say that I came out on top in all of our confrontations, but I can say that after the first, my fear of my father evaporated like dew on a hot summer day. After that I never backed down. Nor did I ever shrink from making an ugly scene worse if it helped me get the last word. I knew exactly where I stood with my parents, and I could live with Ma’s skepticism. I wasn’t asking her permission to marry Eileen. We were just telling her what our plans were.

Later that afternoon, Eileen and I set out on the hour-long drive to the suburbs of Boston. Despite my bravado in Ma’s apartment, we were both anxious. It was dark when we pulled up in front of my parents’ house. Lights blazed brightly from the ground floor windows. An extra place had been set at the dining table. Eileen and I sat next to each other facing my brother Archbold, now 16, home from boarding school for the holiday.

We had agreed in advance on the subjects we were going to avoid: politics, the Vietnam war in particular, our communist comrades, and our plan to become activist teachers organizing to fight capitalism. And, of course, the pregnancy and the upcoming abortion. Eileen, who had seen what I was like when I challenged my father, had made me promise not to argue that night.

I wondered if my parents had had that same discussion before our arrival. They, too, seemed to be avoiding sensitive subjects. So fixated was I on the news I had to deliver, it’s hard to remember what we actually did talk about until the critical moment arrived. There was a pause in the conversation. I saw my chance and plunged forward.

“Oh, by the way, there’s something Eileen and I wanted to tell you . . .”

My father laid down his fork down and listened in silence, his brows knit in intense concentration. Then he and my mother looked at one another. I braced myself. The scene froze, as if someone had jammed the reels of a movie projector. It felt like my father was about to lash out at me. My mouth was dry, and I felt my breath quicken. Would I be able to keep my promise to Eileen? If my father said something rude, I couldn’t believe she would want me to just sit there and take it.

“Well, congratulations to both of you!” he said at last. His voice quavered, and his attempt at a smile didn’t look real. I could hardly believe what I’d just heard. My mother said something but I couldn’t hear her. Archbold asked if he was going to be let out of school to come to the wedding. My father said something about champagne. He and my mother went out to the kitchen together. Eileen looked at me anxiously put her hand on my arm. Did I look as confused as I felt? We heard a cork pop. Then the door from the kitchen swung open and my mother came out with flute glasses.

My father raised his glass and toasted us awkwardly. I tried to wrap my head around him not objecting or arguing. I knew he didn’t care for Eileen. He must think I was a fool for marrying her. I found myself thinking about what he said on my last visit, when I told him I was transferring yet again to a new college.

When I first transferred, he had bristled at my choice of a state college, when I could have returned to an Ivy League school, but ultimately agreed to cover tuition and room and board. The second time, he cut back his support, accusing me of stretching out my undergraduate education in order to create turmoil at his expense as long as possible. From now on there would be no more living expenses and only one more year of tuition. After that he was done. From the undertone of resignation in his voice when he toasted us and our wedding plans, it sounded like he was done now—not yet with tuition support, but with worrying about whether my foolish decisions were going to ruin my life. From this day on that would be my problem, not his.

My mother’s reaction was entirely different. No hint of the disapproval I read in my father’s eyes. Her concern was the practicalities of the wedding—the where and the when and the who. I dreaded this almost as much as if they’d tried to talk me out of the wedding. The last thing we needed that night was to be sucked into a discussion about how big and elaborate the wedding should be and which aunts and uncles and cousins should be invited. To my relief, Eileen stepped in and stopped all of that. She hadn’t seen any of her aunts and uncles and cousins for several years. They’d pretty much abandoned her and her mother and sister after her father died. They were the last people she wanted to see at the wedding.

That took some of the wind out of my mother’s sails, but not all of it.

“Have you arranged for a priest?” She glanced at me, as if this was something I should have done. “Isn’t your family Catholic, Eileen?”

Eileen didn’t want a priest any more than she wanted her aunts and uncles and cousins. Her mother hadn’t said anything about having one. Ma knew perfectly well Eileen didn’t believe in all that and hadn’t gone to confession or Mass since she moved out on her own.

“Just because she hasn’t said anything doesn’t mean she isn’t expecting it. Look around and see if you can find someone.”

Eileen and I looked at one another in dismay. What was happening? The rehearsals that we had painstakingly carried out to try to avoid a debacle that night had been rehearsals for the wrong thing. We’d been preparing for objections and roadblocks and obstacles, and now here we were knee-deep in details that had nothing to do with us building a life together.

My mother said to my father that whoever else we invited, there was no way we could avoid asking his father. The Colonel, as my mother referred to him, had moved south to a military retirement home in southern Georgia, where he’d met Johnnie, a local widow who kept books for the retirement home. Just two years after the death of my grandmother, Johnnie and the Colonel were married.

My father raised his eyebrows in dread. Grandpa’s new bride was a sensitive subject. Johnnie and Grandpa had visited us soon after they were married. It was quite an experience for the whole family, but especially for my father. Johnnie was loud. She asked personal questions. She was a born-again Christian. In my father’s eyes, she had too many of the wrong sort of opinions.

Across the table I could see Archbold shaking his head in dismay. He had seen those arched eyebrows all too often, and I guessed he was thinking what I was thinking, that this could turn into an ugly scene after all. By now I was long past fearing my father’s temper, but I wondering whether one more ugly scene lay ahead. I, however, was long past fearing dinner-table confrontations, but I knew they were torture for Archbold. Probably for Eileen, too. But if it happened now I’d stay out of it. I didn’t mind if Grandpa came. Johnnie either, for that matter. When they first met, Grandpa had teased me about not having a girlfriend. Maybe I’d remind him of that when he met Eileen.

When it was time for us to leave, my father got to his feet a little unsteadily and walked us to the door. He said goodbye with unusual warmth, and I couldn’t make out what was behind it. Resignation? Relief that I knew my own mind and my future was out of his hands? Or maybe it was just alcohol. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d had an extra martini or two before our arrival. He’d probably thought he would need it to get through the evening.

Outside, a thin coating of new snow was already melting.

“Where are we going to find a priest?” muttered Eileen as our tires hissed out onto the highway. “It isn’t that easy. They don’t want to just marry you if you’re not in their parish. They want you to be going to Mass. They want to know you’re a real Catholic.”

I murmured something in sympathy, even though I didn’t think it was such a big deal. I’d known liberal priests and was pretty sure I could find one to marry us in a city as big as Atlanta. Hypocrisy, yes, but what of it? God didn’t exist. Who else could possibly mind? I knew Eileen was frustrated, but that one concession to my mother and hers seemed a small price to pay to avoid either a lifetime of acrimony or a big wedding, the kind of lavish event that our communist comrades would never let us live down. It was a huge relief not to have to worry about either of these. We’d cleared a major hurdle, revealing our wedding plans to our parents. We had more hurdles ahead: starting classes, finding new jobs on campus, traveling to New York for the abortion. I did not have the brain space to worry about the minor hypocrisy of claiming to believe something we didn’t, just so a priest could preside at our wedding.