Guy’s note, she read it again. Yes, one o’clock. This was his first communication in three years, despite a dozen letters from her. He used to be the prolific one. He had maintained the correspondence with their families. He was the sentimental one. And now?
Often in those last days he had tried to relieve her spells of depression. On their seventh anniversary he suggested a good dinner at Damarco’s. They both tried to enjoy the vignette. Red-checked tablecloths. Chianti bottles. (But she had no one to wait for. They had come together.) Guy ordered them the second most expensive thing on the menu. They talked about plans for the summer and about a friend from Berkeley who would visit the next week. He said he wanted to tell her something and he hoped it wouldn’t sound too soppy. He rather liked being married to a frizzy radical. Of course he wasn’t politically impotent just because he was an intellectual. His work in the dialectical influences on Freud was important for the Movement too. He wasn’t going to apologize. Anyway, he knew she wasn’t judgmental; that was one of the reasons he would always love her.
After that meal at Damarco’s, she really craved a liqueur. Kahlua or Tia Maria. No, she had promised herself—only three drinks a night. What the hell was wrong with her anyway? Why was she constricted by his good will? Guilty. Yes, she had used this marriage for her own ends, for support and confidence. Now she needed to stand alone. Maybe not completely guilty. “A mortal sin is a knowing offense against.…” She sipped her coffee slowly, trying not to conjure the soothing qualities of Kahlua. The change had come naturally, at least imperceptibly. They had both changed. They weren’t the same people. God, it all sounded so trite, so hollow, so boring. No, this couldn’t—wouldn’t—happen to them, she told herself. They would talk when they got to bed. This air was too close with smoke and parmesan for sense. Once they got out of this place, they would be all right.
Neither of them felt like going to bed. Guy suggested Scrabble. She agreed. Her first word was “cache.”
“That’s a double word score,” he smiled, “twenty-four points.”
From that moment, that move, Susan never again doubted that they would separate. And understanding so, she didn’t have much left to figure out.
She did wonder, now as she waited at Larry Blake’s, whether Guy still played Scrabble.
Joan Crawford
Revival
He didn’t usually pick up hitchhikers. But she was wearing this green Joan Crawford hat. He hadn’t seen those broad-rimmed hats since his kid sister used to mug around in them. Green felt with a red polka dot sash. Ah, what the hell, he was an hour up on his time. He’d make it by tomorrow, easy, even if he had to go out of his way to drop her off. He supposed that’s what you did with hitchhikers. Anyway, he was fed up with these radio phone-ins. Wouldn’t mind a little company. So he eased over to the curb. She looked up, delighted.
“Where ya heading?” he shouted into the frozen morning.
“East,” she said briskly, “as far as you’re going East.”
“Well, I can’t take you to the Atlantic Ocean. But I am going as far as Salt Lake City. Hop in if you like.” He thought maybe he sounded a little too flip.
She grinned, piled her satchels in the back seat and slid into the front. She fastened the seat belt with the same dispatch as his wife and he noticed how different the two of them were. Different spirit. From the road, he had guessed that she was mid-twenties, like his sister. But now he could see she was at least thirty-five. Interesting how some women just stay young.
He felt her looking at him looking at her. He couldn’t just ask why she was going East. He didn’t want to start off with something boring like that. “Running away from home?” he chuckled.
“Yes,” she said, unpinning her hat, placing it on her lap and watching the road ahead.
II
Maple Leaf or Beaver
“Will you check the turnoff for Highway 80?” The first thing Guy had said for three hours.
“Just past Reno,” Susan said. “And from there, let’s see, it’s about 2,000 miles.”
He smiled and turned on the radio.
By the Time I Get to Phoenix.
Susan watched the dark, bearded man behind the wheel of this van which carried all her belongings—grapefruit crates of clothes and books and the hope of silver-coated wedding presents. The van, itself, was a wedding gift, purchased with a rather grand check from Guy’s father four years ago. She thought the van suited them perfectly: sensible and unpretentious. She hated cushy sedans reeking of new naugahyde and isolated from the world by shock absorbers.
“Doesn’t this remind you of a covered wagon?” Susan asked, nervously twisting a curl of her long brown hair.
“Not exactly,” Guy said. “I mean, we are wearing seat belts.”
“How far do you think we’ll get today?” she asked. She didn’t say, “What if we can’t get across the border?”
“I dunno,” he said. “Let’s just drive ’till we’re tired.” He turned up the radio.
By the Time I Get to Phoenix.…
She didn’t really want to talk now, either. She would have a whole life to talk with this taciturn man who was her husband. Whoever he was. Whomever he would become. “Jesus Christ.” Her mother had suggested the resemblance soon after she found out Guy was going to be a professor. The image changed to “Rasputin” when mother saw Guy on KPIX, burning his draft card. Susan, herself, had always thought Guy looked like Peter Yarrow on the cover of Album 1700. How could she have known that The Great Mandella would let them off at a strange border?
She wanted to be with Guy. She loved Guy’s commitment and intelligence. She enjoyed being part of his family. They argued about theatre and read The Economist. They were interested in her work. They asked about propaganda and objectivity and literary journalism. Not that her own mother wasn’t interested. She had always wanted Susan to be happy. She waited on tables in dingy restaurants for twenty years so her daughter could be happy in America. Susan appreciated that her family were good, hard-working people. But they never understood her wanting to go to college, never asked questions about her writing. Maybe she was a little ashamed of their grammar and their bowling trophies. Yes, she was ashamed of being ashamed. And eventually her mother approved of Guy Thompson, approved of her marrying up, although she didn’t want her moving away. Certainly not moving as far as Canada. Somehow all of Susan’s shame and guilt and regret about their separation got lost in those arguments about Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. But there had been no choice, no choice about the war.
Susan wanted to stop the van and ask, “What if we don’t get in?” Instead, she kept her silence and watched the asphalt hem into brown Nevada hills. The border guards weren’t allowed to inquire about the draft; all the selective service counselors had said so. Still, gossip was that some guys got turned away. What if they couldn’t get in at Windsor? Should they try Sarnia? Would they hide out in the north Michigan woods? Susan and Guy had carefully discussed the leaving. They were reconciled about not being able to return to the States. But what if they had nowhere to go? She refused to think about it.
She thought, instead, about last night’s conversation with Mother.
“It’s against the law,” her mother said.
“Mother, we’ve been through this before.”
“You’re breaking the law, both of you.”
“Is it a good law? Is it a good war?”
“Why can’t you get out of it legally, like your brother Bill?”
“You know that we’ve tried, for eighteen months, to get out of it. As for Bill—Bill does ballistics research. That’s the same as fighting.”
“Better that Guy go to jail, like Joan Baez’ husband.”
“Mother, you’re not honestly suggesting that.”
“And what about your job? You’re going to leave all that, chasing off to Canada with some man?”
“Well, this is interesting. Since when have you found my career more sacred? Besides, it was a mutual
decision. We’re both resisting.”
Silence. Patience, Susan reminded herself. It was important that this conversation end well.
“Mother?”
“Yes?”
“When you left Scotland to come to the States, it was your choice.”
“That was entirely different. It was money. I left so I could make a living somewhere. But you, you’ve got a college education. You could have a nice home here. Listen,” she spoke more slowly and softly now, “every country has its problems.”
“Mom, phone calls from Canada are going to be expensive. Why don’t we make the best of this?”
“Of course dear, you’re right, dear. Remember I love you. Remember.…”
Susan stared out the van window at the endless road ahead. And she thought about how Guy’s parents were such a contrast as they sat around the family breakfast table this morning.
Guy and Susan had risen wordlessly and slipped on the matching brown and beige terry cloth robes his parents had given them.
Dr. Thompson was sitting at the oak table, slowly rotating a crystal glass of orange juice. Mrs. Thompson called from the kitchen, “Perhaps you should go and wake them, darling?”
“No, no need,” laughed Guy. “We wouldn’t want to be late for.…”
His father looked up expectantly, like a schoolmaster waiting for the wrong answer.
“For, for the future,” stumbled Guy.
“Precisely,” said Dr. Thompson.
Mrs. Thompson nodded briskly to her husband and smiled to her children, “Sleep well, sweet ones?”
“Just fine, thank you,” Susan sang and followed her into the kitchen while Guy took the seat next to his father.
The coffee had started to perk. Eggs lay out on the stainless steel counter. Room temperature by now. Ready to be boiled. White against coldwater steel. Susan had never cooked in Mrs. Thompson’s kitchen. She had never done anything except wash the dishes. She didn’t even dry them because she couldn’t tell where all the fancy plates belonged. Susan picked up the eggs one by one with a slotted spoon, submerging them in the hot waves. From the oven, bearclaw pastries sweated sweetly. Mrs. Thompson had been saving them in the fridge since Tuesday. Just as Susan reckoned the eggs were ready, Mrs. Thompson reached in front of her, switched off the gas and placed them in four china egg cups at the end of a silver tray. Susan carried them into the dining room with acolytic care.
Usually the oak breakfast table was spread with green pages from the Chronicle. This morning, it was bare, save for two crystal glasses of orange juice slowly rotating in their watermarks and the $50 bill which lay between them.
“Be sensible for once, Guy. Your mother and I just want to feel that you’re eating properly on your trip north.”
(“He always makes it sound like a polar bear expedition,” Guy would say.)
“Thanks, Dad, but we’re both old enough to take care of each other.” Last night they had worried together about making it to the end of the month. Guy looked at Susan nervously.
Dr. Thompson flushed. He always bore anger with florid Victorian dignity. “If you can’t accept a little help at a time like this, I don’t know what’s happened to the concept of family.”
Susan picked up the $50 and put it on the tray. “It’s very kind of you,” she said and bent down to kiss her father-in-law.
“That’s a girl,” said Dr. Thompson.
Such a polite, distracted breakfast, the kind of meal you have with fellow travellers—everyone caught up in their own thoughts, random references to mileage and time of arrival. No mention of departure. After an hour there was no more silence left. Since they had packed the van the previous evening, they only had to load their suitcases now.
And so it ended quietly, without any of the strain or recrimination or tears of the last twelve months. They drove down Fenwick and past the yellow adobe house with the sleek Irish setter. She reflected numbly that Guy’s mother hadn’t cried. A tear escaped down his nose, dripping from his moustache like sweat. He asked her to check that they had all the maps.
It was a 2,500 mile waiting room. She read him Newsweek and Ramparts and The Making of a Counterculture as they rode the rainy highways between hashbrowns and scrambled eggs and double cheeseburgers.
By the Time I Get to Phoenix was top of the charts in every small-town radio station.
NBC Monitor analyzed President Nixon. (President Nixon. That still seemed unreal to her.)
CBS repeated instant news. Instant news.
For miles before and after Salt Lake City they heard engagements, marriages, items for barter, prayers of the day.
By the Time I Get to Phoenix.…
They were cutting right across the country without being there. Rain, asphalt, gas station Coke machines, vacant winter-rate motels, rain, asphalt.
“Shall I read the business section?” she asked.
“I dunno,” he said. “What’s it about?”
Silence.
“Guy?”
“Yeah, hon?”
“What are you thinking about, dear?”
“An article on spider monkeys in the Journal of Primatologists, February issue.”
“Swell.”
“What?”
“Isn’t that fucker ever going to get to Phoenix?”
“What?”
“Damn radio,” she switched it off. “Inane.”
He nodded absently and turned on Instant News, adding,
“Maybe in Canada the songs will be in French and we won’t be able to understand them.”
She didn’t say, “What if we don’t get in.”
Last summer there had been no barriers. On their pup tent trip around North America, they had looped back and forth from Plattsburg to Montreal to Rochester to Toronto to Detroit to Calgary to Seattle. A trial journey. If they could survive in a pup tent, they could survive exile. At that time, Canada was one romantic option. They were still negotiating with the draft board, medical school, Oxford, the Navy Reserve. Canada seemed like the land of the possible. Everything was possible until December when only the Navy Reserve and Canada were left. They chose Canada. She knew they were right, of course. Of course, as long as they got in.
So this year they celebrated his birthday at the Sleepy Hollow Motel in Iowa City. They didn’t feel like dining out. She sneaked the Coleman stove into their room and reheated pea soup. They ate silently, stretched out on the coral chenille bedspread, watching Marcus Welby, M.D.
“I’m going to miss Robert Young,” she sighed.
“What kind of shit is that?” he said. “Talk about reaction ary values.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Remember Father Knows Best? Kathy, Bud, Betty. There was always a sense of fairness.”
He grimaced, as he often did, enjoying her optimism, but baffled about how it could be so thoroughly misplaced.
“The Andersons,” she continued. “The kind of nice, stable family everybody wants. And remember Franco, the Italian gardener?”
“Yeah, I remember. A thoroughly racist role.”
“My, weren’t you perceptive at ten years old?”
“Silly to argue,” he said. “Anyway, you’ll be able to watch Robert Young in Canada. They get all the Buffalo stations.”
“Cultural imperialism,” she agreed sardonically. But this reassured her. And she was glad Guy didn’t want to make love but just to hang on. She would feel better the next day when they saw Hank and Sara in Ann Arbor.
It would be good to have friends living that close to Canada. They could all go camping in northern Ontario together. So much clean, green space. Sometimes she thought of Canada as a huge National Park. Maybe they could all meet for weekends in Montreal. Not that she wanted to huddle with Americans. She had heard of these “Amex communities,” full of heavy “political people.” She always felt nervous around political people. Not tough enough. They were so suspicious that they made her feel like she really was a CIA agent. She was a war protestor, not a radical. Even her own f
amily agreed after the Cambodian invasion (well, for them, it had been after Kent State) that the War was wretched. To her, Canada was the only reasonable choice. And now, having made that choice, she and Guy were traitors, idealists or good political people depending on who was lecturing or interviewing them.
“Do you feel political?” she asked the next morning in Illinois.
“I feel tired,” he answered. “Why don’t you read the book review section?”
Hank and Sara’s apartment might have been astral-projected from Berkeley—with the same peeling rattan chairs, the same odor of cat pee in the yellow rug. After their famous chile and some good Colombian dope, they were all back on Euclid Avenue.
“Medical school is a drag so far,” said Hank. “Two of my ancient professors look like founding members of the AMA.”
“You don’t have to say that for me,” returned Guy. “I’m glad you got a draft deferment. And I’m just as glad I didn’t get into med school. Come on, now, it’s cool, isn’t it?”
“Aw, I don’t know. But I have met some good people in the Vietnam Aid Committee.”
“Some good political people?” asked Susan.
He nodded solemnly and pulled out a white booklet. “Here it is, Manual For Draft Age Immigrants To Canada. Everyone is using it. I mean it’s been good for some people passing through.”
Susan was touched, and very frightened. This was like a refugee visa. It reminded her of the job permit which Mother kept under the gloves in the top bureau drawer. Thin blue paper and black ink, “culinary worker.” She remembered Rosa Kaburi, her fourth grade friend from Hungary, who had told her about the name tags on their wrists and how they were inspected for lice by the immigration officer. But this was Canada, she reminded herself. You didn’t even need a passport to enter.
Movement Page 2
