“I’ll get Harry on the phone tonight and we’ll see.”
“No, no time for that. The MULA are taking a small group of us today. They’re leaving in an hour. I need to know right away whether I can have $200 in expenses and four more days on the deadline. If I don’t go with them now, I’ll never get into camp.”
“Give me forty-five minutes to reach Harry.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Right, call me back in thirty-five minutes on the 06 line.”
She didn’t think Harry could refuse an exclusive interview with Marquez. The number was busy. But then, Harry was so reticent about the Trots. Susan dialed his number again. Busy. And again. She would never make it to Harry’s house in Rosedale and back in that time. However, Guy could. Her only option was to ring Guy.
“Susan, hon, where the hell are you?”
“I’m afraid I’m still at work. Something’s come up. An emergency call from Spain. Tony has a chance to go to Marquez’ camp, but we have to reach him with the OK in a halfhour. I’ll explain later. Could you do me a huge favor? I can’t get Harry on the phone. Could you drive over there and tell him to call me here?”
“Well, I don’t know. I have my doubts about Marquez’ position. The caucus was discussing just this afternoon that his kind of nationalism is …”
“Oh, come on Guy. We can’t ignore a movement as big as that.”
“Fucking hell, it’s not as if I don’t have enough to do tonight, preparing the caucus platform, finding time to work on my thesis.”
“Guy, look, I’m sorry to impose. But this could mean the survival of TA.”
“What about the survival of something euphemistically known as ‘our marriage’?”
She told him she also believed in healthy confrontations, that they should both get into their feelings about the marriage, but couldn’t it wait an hour until she got home?
When she hung up, the only remorse she felt was from her Yoga teacher’s lecture on back tension. How had she taken Guy’s abuse for so long? His rambling accusations as he peered into the aquarium feeding his black bullheads and veiltails. The phone rang and she answered it with relief.
“Susan? Harry here. What’s all this about a Spanish Revolution?”
She repeated the story.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“But there’s no time to think about it. Tony’s calling back in twenty minutes.”
“Why did you arrange a fool thing like that? This is a big decision. We risk a huge hole. On the other hand, a good piece could swing Colson’s judgment.”
“Yes, yes,” she said. “But we’ve got to make a decision.”
“Don’t pressure me,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”
“OK, Harry, but please remember to call within fifteen minutes.”
Had she been too hyper? Guy always said she got hyper in emergencies. Better to get hyper than paralyzed like Harry. Three minutes to nine. TA’s survival could hinge on one good story. She tried to ring Harry. The number was busy. All right, she thought, he must be calling back. She waited, weighted by silence. Finally the phone rang. It was the 06 line. It was Tony.
“Go ahead with it, Tony. Where do you want the money wired?”
She gave him three extra days for the deadline. Elated, she was also surprised at her confidence and her indifference to Harry. He could call her at home if he wanted to find out what had happened. She put on her raincoat and gathered several manuscripts into her briefcase.
Susan walked briskly to the bus stop. Usually she let herself be sucked home on the subway. She hated how people in the underground corridors rushed unconsciously past each other, like numbers in the formulas of some ironic computer programmer. The subway was part of her mindless survival in Toronto. (By the time she jostled a seat, arranged the groceries and briefcase on her lap, she was too exhausted to exhale the parentheses with which she had ordered her day.) Tonight she saw a bus as soon as she turned the corner. She clinked 15 cents into the news vendor’s tin, picked up a Toronto Star and hailed the wheezing, swaggering wagon.
Guy wasn’t home. He probably stopped off at the Brunswick after Harry’s. She just wanted to forget the whole mess. She tidied up the living room and went into the kitchen to make Guy’s sandwiches. She always made them at night because he hated the smell of mustard in the morning. She left him a note before crawling under the covers. The shadow of his body became noticeable in the first light. She hadn’t heard him come back. She must have slept well. She left the room silently at 8:00 a.m.
“Mr. Simpson had to leave for Winnipeg unexpectedly,” Alice said quickly. “He told me that I was to refer any calls to you. He said you would understand about the Manitoba piece, interviewing Dr. Wolfe and all. He said he would call you.”
Susan didn’t understand and Harry didn’t call. Her worries about the Spanish piece disappeared under the havoc of a dozen other decisions about type face and photographs and cartoons. She didn’t have time to panic. Occasionally she would notice herself making decisions and then review her work peripherally.
The review of the Greer book still bothered her. Somehow it wasn’t conclusive enough. She called Hilary for some information, knowing full well that it was a terrible risk.
Hilary exploded. “Sure, sure there are a lot of problems with ‘feminist analysis,’ but Greer doesn’t represent the whole Women’s Movement. Just like every bourgeois black prick doesn’t represent African Liberation.”
“Oh, come on, Hilary, you can’t possibly compare the oppression of women to the exploitation of the Third World. That’s going pretty far.” Susan caught herself almost shouting down the line and said finally, “Look, I’ve got to get back to work.”
The next two days accelerated with the pressure of deadline against Harry’s loose editing. She grew more and more annoyed with him until she realized that she was being unfair. Harry must be distracted, somehow. Normally, he was a fine editor, the most political person she knew. He had gone through so much with the Communist Party in the 50’s. No wonder he was a bit threadbare.
When he sauntered in the office on Monday, Susan settled for a modest admonition, “Harry, you know I had to make a decision about the Spanish piece.”
“The Spanish … oh, yes. I tried to call you back, but I was interrupted. Then Ethel made some emergency call. Sorry about that. I reckoned you were perfectly sensible. What did you tell him?”
“To take three extra days on the story. And I wired $150 expenses.”
“Fine. Just fine,” he said as he walked into his office. He stuck his head back out the door, “Oh, I do have some questions about those columns in the front of the paper. And about the multiple review. I’ve told you before that this isn’t an academic journal. I suppose it’s too late now,” he sighed. “Could you stop by the office on the way back from the printer’s tonight? I’ve got to talk over the publicity with you.”
“Gosh, I’m sorry Harry, but I promised Guy a real supper tonight. It’s our anniversary.” She tried to rationalize the sentimentality, but before she could come up with something that might satisfy Harry, he said, “Neither of us will be able to afford supper if this mockup isn’t approved. Come on. I promise to give you a couple of days off at the end of this thing.”
Damn him. She wasn’t some functionary scurrying after a Christmas bonus. What did he think she was doing while he was in Winnipeg? Hang on. She would sound like Hilary in a minute. The publicity did have to be done. Hang on, Susan. Watch out for the bourgeois individualism.
They met for two hours that evening. She briefed him on last week’s decisions. He reassured her that she had done as well as he could have.
Guy was furious. He was having a hard enough time doing his research lately. When he borrowed a few hours to spend with her, she could at least show up. As far as he could see, she was ALWAYS having emergencies and he wondered, he just wondered without being too analytical about it, how many of them were escapes from their shitty
relationship. Since she didn’t seem to find the occasion so portentous, he was going back to study and would return when dinner was ready. He wished her Happy Anniversary, by the way.
Salad making always soothed her. When she was little, she imagined the best part of being married was going to be sitting in a blue-tiled kitchen reaching into the cornucopia for another cucumber. She liked to score the cucumbers on the edges with a fork so that when she cut them, they came out as unpredictably as paper dolls. (She and Guy were the best of their generation, the archetype virile revolutionaries who might be Mr. and Mrs. American in another era, she mused. Smart, confident, committed. He would finish his Ph.D. in psychology and they would take up his post in Havana. She would raise their kids in a healthy workers’ state. But the order seemed to be breaking down. Susan wasn’t sure she wanted to quit her job. Guy had let his thesis drag on for another year. He never did anything overt to annoy her—that’s why she felt it was her fault—it was what he didn’t do. She couldn’t count on him for everything. In the end, he didn’t even do his own work. Maybe she put too much pressure on him.) Tomatoes were satisfying when they were fresh and firm like these. She hated the overripe ones that sagged under the knife and squirted messily over the glistening chopping board. Raw mushrooms were the best, falling into thin, porous slices like wafers of fungus. Lettuce could be tedious when it was too wet. (She felt like a real bitch sometimes. She had to pry to learn what happened during his day. The conversation would be like an oral exam with halting, circumspect replies. Sometimes his withdrawal was an ambush. Like that weekend of the Third World Medical Conference. He insisted he wanted to go. Then on Thursday he announced that he still hadn’t fixed the thermostats in the monkey room—on Thursday! Her work schedule was ruined for two weeks. It was only afterwards that she realized she might have gone alone.) Susan carefully dried the leaves until they looked like the heavy green tissue paper she used for collages when she was in Sister Matthew’s art class. Fun, all this cutting and reassembling. That’s what she liked best—putting it all in order. She detested random salads, crisp stews in smudged glass bowls. First she put in bits of lettuce then the celery, onion, mushrooms. She sprinkled rosemary and basil. On top she wheeled the tomatoes and cucumbers. (Guy would understand once they had a chance to sit down and discuss the chaos at work. To be fair, she hadn’t told him very much yet. She always got home so late. After she cooked and cleaned up and they watched the news, there wasn’t much time to talk.) The chops were sizzling and the potatoes were done just the way he liked them, with the jackets falling off.
“Guy,” she called into the living room. “Guy.”
No answer, so she set the hot plates on the stove and looked in. “Guy,” she said gently. He was asleep at his desk, his head on a new Asimov science fiction book. “Guy,” she said compassionately. This petulant boy was her protector and partner for life? “Guy,” she said bitterly. She couldn’t cope with the anger. She didn’t know where to release it—at him—or at her own poor judgment. “This is our anniversary,” she told herself. She thought about the layouts she had to do tonight. She shook him, “Harry,” she said and stopped. How often she had almost said that? Eerie. How often she had mixed them up in dreams. And once, when she had promised Guy to deposit the grant in his checking account, she had put it in Harry’s instead. She had felt like such an idiot when the teller showed her the numbers were different.
Guy looked up, “Who did you call?”
“Sorry, love, I’m always incoherent when I’m tired.”
“Well, I’m tired too. I think I’ll push off to bed.”
“But you haven’t eaten. And it’s our anniversary.”
“I suppose you should have thought about both those items a little earlier. I’m worn out. See you in the morning.” He stumbled up from his swivel chair, almost knocking over the half-empty bottle of sherry. She hungrily regarded the level, a sufficient ablution for guilt. She was grateful they still shared some things.
Susan woke late with a terrible hangover. Not so much an alcoholic headache as a residue of remorse. She rose immediately, careful not to awaken Guy. She saw herself gazing into a cup of black coffee. Running to the subway. Answering the phones. What was she doing in Toronto?
“Hello, Susan. This is Hilary. Got a news bulletin for you. Colson is coming down. Thought I should warn you that I got carried away with him yesterday. He was expounding on the vigour and genius of one Harry Simpson.”
What had Hilary done with her big mouth now?
“Well, you know, kid, I’m not thoroughly indiscreet. I didn’t let on that Harry was an absolute moron.”
Susan didn’t know what to blame more—Harry’s fraudulence or her own complicity. How long did she think she could play innocent minion?
“What did you say to Colson?” Susan asked.
“Not much. I just dropped a few hints about Harry’s long sojourn away from the office and about his banker’s hours. I reckoned that the rest was up to you.”
Susan rang off. She buzzed Harry’s office, “Harry, I’ve got to talk with you.”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “And would you bring in those readership surveys? Also the circulation reports. Colson has decided to catch us off guard. This could mean the end of TA if we’re not prepared.”
She watched him take notes on her work. He tried, at first, to comprehend; by noon he was grasping for details. Harry hadn’t made a straightforward decision in months. Lately he had been fading out around deadline time. She always made her decisions sound like clerical minutae. At the end of today’s session, she told Harry that she wanted to be in on the conference with Colson. He was surprised, then agreed with alacrity. “Of course, of course.” It was a sensible idea.
The next morning, the fragrant and glossy mockup arrived an hour before Colson was due. Susan was quite proud of the classy logo, the solid articles, the lively layout. It was so perfectly formed. And after last night, she might have to resign herself to this kind of posterity. She and Guy had never had such a row. It was more like a schism although it was about the same old issues. He charging that she spent too much time at her work; she retorting that he felt jealous because he couldn’t do his own work. He said she would have to make a choice, decide what she wanted. Susan said she didn’t know what she wanted and went to bed. Now she was redeemed from all that by the new magazine. So excited about Colson’s visit, she could hardly concentrate on the circulation figures.
Harry buzzed her on the intercom, “It looks great. Just great. Just what I had imagined. I really couldn’t have done it without you.”
In the middle of the morning, a heavily cologned man wearing a grey striped suit lumbered into the office.
“Harry Simpson, please,” he said, leaning heavily on her desk.
Before she had time to explain that Harry Simpson had a meeting this morning, the man added, “My name is Colson. Carl Colson. I think Harry’s expecting me.” He pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his forehead. “Terrible stairs. Ever think of getting a lift installed?”
This was the visionary publisher? They had been trying to impress this man for three months? He was going to judge The Artisan? Susan hadn’t expected Leon Trotsky, but.…
“Just one moment, please,” she heard herself assuming the respect she wanted to give him. How hollow did her voice sound? How disappointed did her face look? She watched him thanking her, taking a chair, smiling at her. She supposed she was smiling at him.
“Carl, Carl, welcome,” Harry thrust his hand at Carl Colson. “Sorry, I had no idea you were waiting. How long have they kept you here?” Harry ushered him inside. Susan waited demurely for her invitation, but Harry didn’t even turn around to nod before he shut the door.
“Well, well,” she heard him say to Colson, “What do you think of my baby? How about the logo, eh?”
She could not bear the sound of them sitting in the large office congratulating each other. She went out to wash her face
. When she came back, she was still flushed. Her copy of the magazine was gone.
“They’ve taken it in,” said Alice delicately. “They said they didn’t want anything to happen to it.”
What goddam arrogance. It was her sweat. What absolute gall!
Susan heard the intercom buzz.
Always too hyper, Susan said to herself, always too hyper. Hell, they had probably expected her to follow them into Harry’s office. Perhaps she should just go in now and save the formality of answering the line. No, she would wait for them to ask her. They owed her that much.
“Susan, I was wondering if you could do us a favor?”
“Sure, I’ll be right in.”
“No need to trouble yourself. Could you just ask Alice—her line seems to be jammed—could you just ask Alice to bring us two cups of sugared tea?”
“Sure, Harry, sure.”
She relayed the message and watched Alice prepare the tea, place the cups on a tray with some chocolate digestives and take it in. Now Susan felt nothing but the pure release of acrimony. She was too angry to be intimidated, too angry even to be restrained by any kind of judgment. Susan went over and banged on Harry’s door.
She was greeted by an astonished Alice, carrying an empty tray in one hand and a stack of file folders in the other. Susan smiled at her and walked into the office.
“I’ve finished my work for the morning, Harry. I’d like to sit in now.”
“Yes, yes, Mrs. Thompson,” said Colson expansively. “Do come in. Harry tells me you’re such a bright girl, with real drive.” Colson brightened, “Harry says you’re his right hand.”
“Sorry to inform you about the amputation.”
“I beg your pardon?” asked Colson, his frown crossing grotesquely with the receding joviality.
“This girl’s got a great sense of humor, Carl, just one of the things I haven’t had a chance to tell you about her,” Harry smiled indulgently.
Susan looked at him seriously. “I’m thinking about leaving the paper, Harry, about going to a job in Montreal unless some changes are made.”
Movement Page 5
