The Heidi Chronicles

It’s 1965, and Heidi and Susan Johnston are 16, attending a high school dance in Chicago. They sing along to “The Shoop Shoop Song,” and Susan excitedly points out a cute guy who can “twist and smoke at the same time” (162). Susan worries frantically that they might look like they want only to cluster with each other, which might be off-putting for boys, or that they might seem desperate. Chris Boxer, another high school boy, approaches the girls and asks Heidi to dance. To Susan’s chagrin, Heidi declines to leave her friend and then puts him off with her odd sense of humor. Susan wants to dance with the twisting/smoking boy, who resembles Bobby Kennedy, but she decides that her skirt is too long and rolls it up. Susan warns, “You know, as your best friend, I must tell you frankly that you’re going to get really messed up unless you learn to take men seriously” (164). Heidi insists that the only differences between them and the Kennedy lookalike were his ability to smoke while dancing and their ability to get out of gym class during their periods.

Susan goes off to dance with the twisting smoker, and the girls promise to talk the next day. Heidi takes out a book, Death Be Not Proud, and starts to read. Then, she exchanges a glance with Peter Patrone, a young man in a school blazer, and smiles. Peter comes over and notes that she must be intelligent, since bored people usually are. He flirts, and they match each other’s dry, literary sense of humor. Peter says that he had tried to give her a name—“Amanda, Lady Clara, Estelle”—and dramatically tells her not to give her real name, stating, “I want to remember you as you are” (166). Peter asks her to dance, and Heidi hesitates, but he promises to teach her. They sing along to “The Shoop Shoop Song” as they dance.

In 1968, Heidi, now a college student, enters a dance in Manchester, New Hampshire, thrown by Senator Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign, and a hippie offers her a joint. She declines. Scoop Rosenbaum, an “intense but charismatic” young man, approaches Heidi and asks if she’s “guarding the chips” (168). Scoop grades everything from the music playing—Janis Joplin’s “Take a Piece of My Heart”—to the chips because, he explains, he was a great student before he dropped out of Princeton. Heidi introduces herself as Susan and says that she came with a friend. Scoop tells her his immediate assumptions about her, calling her a liberal who is “neat and clean for Eugene” (169). Then, he cheerfully criticizes Heidi for letting him insult her and make presumptions, identifying himself as a journalist and inviting her to have drinks with him, McCarthy, and Paul Newman, whom he will pick up from the airport.

Heidi turns him down, and he presses her, asking what she’s thinking. Heidi notes, “Actually, I was wondering what mothers teach their sons that they never bother to tell their daughters. […] I mean, why the fuck are you so confident?” (172) Scoop is impressed with her candor but insults her plans to become an art historian. They discuss art briefly, as well as feminism, and Scoop calls Heidi by her real name, at first claiming journalistic rigor, but then admitting that she’s wearing a name tag. He refers to her as “Heidella,” (173), which she doesn’t like, although he insists that it’s endearing. Scoop asks Heidi to have sex with him before he goes to meet Paul Newman. She demurs, and he asks if she is a virgin. Scoop makes predictions about both of their eventual suburban family lives, suggesting that they might both look back on this exchange with fondness. Then he kisses her, and Heidi follows him out. As he exits, Scoop pumps his fist in victory.

Three years later, Susan invites Heidi, who is visiting from New Haven where she is a graduate student at Yale, to a “consciousness-raising rap group” (177) session in a church basement in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Jill, a mother and homemaker who has discovered feminism, and Fran, a physicist and lesbian who curses freely, run the group. They are playing Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” when Becky, a 17-year-old girl, enters, having seen a flyer for the group. Jill and Fran welcome her warmly. Susan enters with Heidi in tow, greeting the women with affection. Jill starts the meeting, explaining that she spent her life attending to everyone’s needs, but the meetings helped her to understand that she was ignoring herself. The women frequently say “I love you” (176) to each other. When asked to participate, Heidi explains that she is only visiting, but Fran announces that she is uncomfortable with someone who is “just visiting” being present while she connects to her sisters, calling her “Heidi-ho” (177) as a critique of her lack of commitment to the group. Heidi agrees not to be judgmental.

Susan shares her decision to take a position working on the Law Review to fight the male-dominated system from within, rather than starting her own woman-centered law journal. Fran denounces the idea of working from within, exclaiming, “Either you shave your legs or you don’t” (178). Becky finds this aggressive, but Susan explains that she values Fran’s honesty as a friend. Becky says that Fran reminds her of Bobby, her boyfriend. When Becky reveals that her father is a film professor who made a well-known documentary about hippies, Heidi immediately recognizes the film and knows the name of Becky’s father. Becky’s parents are separated, and one of the women featured in the documentary is her father’s “other wife” (179). Becky’s mother went to California, leaving Becky behind, so Becky invited Bobby to move in with her. However, despite Becky’s efforts to play the role of the traditional homemaker, he ignores her and is mean to her.

Jill immediately invites Becky to live with her, and Becky is touched. Fran challenges Heidi to share, and Heidi explains that she is studying representations of women in art history from the Renaissance Madonna to the present, but from a humanist perspective, rather than a feminist one. Susan interjects that Heidi is “obsessed with an asshole” (180), Scoop, who is now a law student at Yale. Since the first time she slept with him, Heidi has dated him off and on, although he treats her badly. Heidi admits that she has an old friend named Peter who would be a much better partner, so she blames herself for the way Scoop treats her. Fran and the other women decide that they love Heidi, too, and they all embrace. Pleased, Susan states that she is happy for her oldest girlfriend, Heidi, to finally meet her woman friends. Jill suggests that they sing a song, which they start to do, but Fran interjects “Fuck this shit!” (183) and plays Aretha Franklin again. They all sing along.

At the Chicago Art Institute in 1974, Heidi and her friend Debbie shout through a bullhorn, protesting in the rain about the lack of female artists’ representation in the museum. Debbie is austerely fashionable in all black. Peter enters, chanting playfully, “No more master penises!” (185). Debbie announces that they plan to storm the curator’s office at two o’clock. Ignoring Peter, Debbie tells Heidi that she’s going to check and see if perhaps their fellow protestors went to the wrong spot. Peter, now a medical intern, is exhausted but came to see Heidi after learning that she would be in the city for four hours but would be too busying protesting to see him. They greet each other warmly. It stops raining, which Peter declares an auspicious sign for their cause. He expresses droll surprise to learn that someone who dresses like Debbie doesn’t call herself Deborah, suggesting that Heidi might attract more followers as “Heidarine or Heidigwyth” (186). Heidi accuses him of cruelty, but Peter acknowledges that he is just self-obsessed.

Peter asks about Scoop, whom he obviously doesn’t like, and Heidi says that he is currently a clerk for the Supreme Court in Washington, along with Susan, and that they aren’t together but occasionally have sex. Peter explains that he feels a distance growing between them, as they haven’t seen each other for eight months, although Heidi protests that she was busy writing her dissertation. Heidi promises to find Peter a girlfriend, and Peter reveals that he is gay. He has been dating a child psychiatrist, although he is considering leaving him for an attractive waiter. Uncomfortable, Heidi hopes that Debbie will return soon, but Peter pushes her to listen, exclaiming, “The pursuit of happiness of other men like me is just as politically and socially valid as hanging a couple of goddamn paintings because they were signed by someone named Nancy, Gladys, or Gilda” (189). Debbie enters with Clara and tells Heidi that it’s time to advance on the curator’s office but stops Peter from joining because it’s supposed to be a women’s march. Heidi decides to stay back with Peter, who comments that they should have let him march since he knows the curator—who, he insinuates, is also gay.

Heidi threatens, playfully, to hit him, and Peter uses her hand to hit himself. They hit each other, describing the fundamental issues between them with each impact, and Heidi hits him harder for “not being desperately and hopelessly in love” (191) with her. Peter hits her back for making him feel guilty, which surprises Heidi. They’ve cleared the air, but Peter hits her once more for forgetting the 10th anniversary of their meeting, before admitting that it’s actually been nine years. He tells Heidi that he’s feeling optimistic and happy for the first time and they can have good lives as long as Heidi keeps her sense of humor and doesn’t marry Scoop. Heidi says that she’d like to meet the psychiatrist, but Peter reveals that the waiter, Mark, has come to meet him for lunch, and Heidi notes that he’s cute. After Peter introduces her, Heidi invites them both to storm the curator’s office with her, regardless of Debbie’s complaints, and they exit together, chanting, “Women in Art!” (192)

The scene takes place in 1977 outside the Pierre Hotel Ballroom in New York, where Scoop’s wedding reception is taking place. Susan enters with Molly McBride, an attractive young woman who works with Susan at the Montana Women’s Health and Legal Collective. To Molly, Susan describes Heidi as her oldest friend, Peter as a doctor, the bride as a stranger, and the groom as “a prick” (193). Heidi and Peter enter, and Peter mimics the ceremony, mocking Scoop as unemotional and dispassionate toward his bride, Lisa, whom Peter imitates sardonically as a woman who had gone to college to get her “M.R.S. degree” (193). They make fun of Lisa for being “bland” and having “no meat on her” (194), and Peter is pleased when Molly joins in. Scoop enters, and Molly greets him with the comment, “I heard you’re a prick” (194). Susan and Scoop greet each other. Then Scoop and Peter meet each other for the first time, calling Heidi “Heidella” (194) and arousing her ire by acting chummy. Scoop, who clerked with Susan, says that Susan “could have been brilliant,” but “brilliance is irrelevant in Montana” (195). Scoop urges them all to go in to the reception, and they all look to Heidi for direction. Susan decides that Heidi’s non-answer is her way of expressing her desire to stay, so Susan and Molly walk in to the party.

Heidi thinks that Susan is upset with her, noting that Susan is thinking about going to business school to help her feminist law collective become self-sufficient, but Scoop insists that she’s just driven and will end up on Wall Street within two years. Heidi mentions that Susan and Molly are not together. Peter asks Scoop if he’s in love, which takes him by surprise. Scoop asks if Peter and Heidi are together, and Peter’s “yes” drowns out Heidi’s “no;” then Scoop tells Peter that he is in love because “sure, why not?” (196). Lisa enters to usher Scoop back in for their first dance, and Scoop introduces Peter as Heidi’s fiancé. Lisa admits bashfully that she has always wanted to have kids, although she is also a children’s book illustrator. Peter suddenly recognizes her name and praises her work, exclaiming that the children in his waiting room will mutiny if she stops drawing. Lisa invites Peter to dance with her, noting to Scoop that there are two women she doesn’t recognize dancing with each other, and they might be wedding crashers. Peter and Lisa exit. Scoop asks Heidi, “Why did you let me do this?” (198), referring to his new marriage. Heidi is indignant, but she admits that Peter is gay, although she does live with a man, an editor she met while contributing to an essay collection. Scoop attempts to wheedle more information about Heidi’s boyfriend, but she doesn’t want to share any details and mockingly claims that he edits for the men’s magazine Hustler.

Heidi mentions that she has applied for a Fulbright grant because she wants to go to England to write her book. Scoop comments that his new wife doesn’t like it when he curses and explains that he married Lisa not because he is so much in love, but because he needed to stop hanging onto Heidi. Lisa can’t compare to Heidi, but Scoop doesn’t want to be married to someone who would want to be his equal. Scoop claims that if Heidi’s life choices had been different, he would be marrying her instead of Lisa, which Heidi denies. Scoop asserts, “I never meant to hurt you” (203), and Heidi looks away. Heidi comments that she should go in before Peter finds himself a waiter. The reception’s master of ceremonies calls for Scoop to dance with his wife to their song, “You Send Me.” Scoop goes inside, and Heidi sits and starts to cry. Scoop returns. After a moment, he asks, “Are you guarding the chips?” (203). They kiss and then dance together. Scoop tells Heidi that he will always love her, and Heidi replies, “Oh, please…” (204). Scoop sings the song as they dance.