Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [122]
The foundation’s office, once an airless den, had yielded years ago to a five-room suite on Lexington Avenue, with a staff of eight, not counting legal advisers or its portfolio manager, who had performed stock-market miracles. Millions were accumulated not only by dint of royalties and shrewd investments, but also through endowments left to the foundation. After it all became too much for Norman to handle, he had appointed two African-American feminists to the board of directors: Jessica Peters, whose poetry was published in both The New Yorker and The Nation, and Dr. Shirley Wade, who lectured on “cultural studies” at Princeton. The two formidable sisters brought in an abrasive historian, Doris Mandelbaum, author of Herstory from Boadicea to Madonna.
It was Ms. Mandelbaum who led the initial boardroom rebellion, pointing out that it was a typical male power move, some might even say “an oxymoron, gender-wise,” that the chairperson of the board of a feminist foundation should be a man, of the nuclear-family persuasion, his only claim to that office that he was a relative of Clara’s, herself a martyr to male chauvinist insentience. An embarrassed Norman readily agreed to step down as chairperson, and was replaced by Dr. Shirley Wade. But Norman continued to keep an eye on things, sifting through the foundation’s accounts. At a 1992 board meeting, his manner characteristically timorous, he nevertheless questioned a junket the sisters had made to a literary conference in Nairobi, with a stopover in Paris, charging it to the foundation.
“I suppose if we had gone to Tel Aviv, you wouldn’t have questioned the trip.”
Next Norman had the audacity to query the legitimacy of lunches at The Four Seasons, Le Cirque, Lutèce, and The Russian Tea Room, also charged to the foundation.
“But I imagine it would have been kosher, so to speak, if we had met to discuss foundation business over chitlins in some greasy spoon in Harlem.”
“Please,” said Norman, flushing.
“We’ve had enough of your tripping on penis-power here, Norm.”
“The truth is we’re all weary of your patronizing manner —”
“— and your sexual hangups —”
“— and your racism.”
“How can you accuse me of — Didn’t I appoint you and Shirley to the board?”
“Oy vey, bubele, but it made you feel good inside, didn’t it? It warmed your kishkas.”
“You could go home and tell your wifey, we’ve got schvartzes on the board now.”
As a consequence of an emergency board meeting, held in Norman’s absence at La Côte Basque a year later, he was sent a registered letter dismissing him from the board of The Clara Charnofsky Foundation, which would now be known as The Clara Charnofsky Foundation for Wimyn.
“Goddamn it, Norman, why didn’t you get a lawyer and throw the lot of them out?”
“Sure, and then they would write a letter to the Times condemning me as a racist.”
“So what?”
“So they would have been right, don’t you see? I’ve discovered that I am a racist, and so are you, only I acknowledge it now, they did that much for me. I’m also sexually prejudiced. A hypocrite. I used to wear an AIDS ribbon on my jacket lapel to classes in NYU, but you know what? I stopped going to that Italian restaurant on 9th Street, Flora and I were regulars for years; some of the waiters are gay, suddenly very gaunt, and what if one of them cut his finger peeling potatoes in the kitchen, and thought nothing of it?
“Those women forced me to take a good look at myself. I had to admit it did make me feel good inside, noble even, to appoint two African-Americans to the board, and deep down what I expected from them was gratitude. You know I once told them Shamir was an abomination