“I worry,” said Timo, “it would seem like we’re blaming the workers for the arms race.”
Sonia piped up. “But if the workers did stop working, the weapons wouldn’t get made.”
“So you’re suggesting we try to convince them to join us?” Isis asked her.
“Why not?”
Carla: “That’s what CMCP does at the Litton plant.”
“And what if we targeted the front entrance?”
“It would be for the media.”
“I for one,” said Pete, “am sick and tired of trying to get the attention of the media. They’re collaborators.”
“So what I’m hearing so far,” said our facilitator, Isis, “is that we’re leaning toward using the workers’ entrance.”
Dieter, who was cross-legged on the floor wearing a kerchief like Pete sometimes did, though not managing to look remotely like a pirate, said, “Are we?”
“You have a different interpretation?”
“You’re all talking like this is a done deal. We haven’t even got consensus on this action.”
“Dieter, you’re right. Dieter’s made a good point, everybody. Okay. What I suggest then is that we decide what each action would entail, this one and the recruitment office, and then make the choice.”
Pete pumping, pumping his ankle. “They do tours.”
“Pardon?”
He looked at the rest of us, not Isis, whom he had treated cordially thus far but refused to make eye contact with. “They do tours inside the factory. If we timed the action to coincide with a tour, it would be for the public too, not just—”
Isis: “We could go on a tour!”
“Okay, now we’re gggetting somewhere,” Timo said.
Dieter: “Just a sec. The recruitment centre was Isis’s first choice and Jane’s, too.” He looked at me hard and, with his wiry hair tucked in the kerchief, his glasses seemed gigantic. “I’m leaning that way myself. It’ll just be a whole lot less complicated.”
“I’m definitely for Boeing now,” said Isis. “I love the idea of joining the tour. Maybe we could even chain ourselves inside the plant.”
“We couldn’t get in with chains,” Carla said. “They’ll search our bags.”
Dieter: “Is anybody even listening to me!”
We took a second break at ten-fifteen. No meeting had ever gone on this long. Before we reconvened, Sonia beckoned me to her room to show me Pascal curled up on her bed, asleep. Dotingly, she tucked the sleeping bag around him that she’d fetched from the living room.
Pete asked to speak again once we had gathered. He leaned forward in the beanbag, elbows on knees, holding his head in his hands. He was tired of wasting time, he said. Time was running out and he was prepared to act, whatever the consequences. He said, “I’m not afraid.”
“So what are you suggesting?” Dieter asked.
“I’m suggesting that those of us who want to do the Boeing action go down and do it and those who don’t, stay here and pick their ears.”
“You want me out of the group,” Dieter said.
“We don’t,” Sonia told him. “We don’t at all. That’s not what he means.”
Pete: “This isn’t about the group. It’s about the whole world. I’m sick of spending all this time on group dynamics. I’m sick of hearing about everybody’s feelings. People? Who cares? What I feel is irrelevant.”
“It isn’t, Pete,” Isis started to say until something in his look struck her mute. Dieter tore off the kerchief and threw it down. He didn’t agree with the plan, he said, but he wouldn’t block consensus any longer.
“Are you coming with us?” Sonia asked.
“I have to think about it.”
We rose for our closing embrace. “I think this was the most difficult meeting we’ve ever had,” Isis said and those who murmured murmured in agreement. “It’ll make us stronger. And thank you, Jane, for reading that story. I feel like it got right into my bloodstream.”
“Yes!”
“And thank you, Pete, for getting us on track as usual.”
“Fuck off,” he said with an off-key laugh.
Dieter was standing on my foot, his heel pinned on my instep. When I tried to pull out from under him, he shifted so I bore the full brunt of his weight.
“We shall live in peace,” Carla began.
I had two exams the following week. By force of habit I sequestered myself, though what did it matter if I took my exams or not? On the other hand, if by some miracle the world didn’t end, I needed my scholarship. I hated how I waffled! Sonia was so committed. I wanted to be like her, yet I knew I never would be. I had no integrity. None. I’d lied outright about being a vegetarian and, though I avoided meat now, it was reluctantly. I ate any kind of cheese. I’d shamelessly read them that story because I didn’t want to admit that Chekhov in Russian was too difficult. Even my friendship with Sonia was false. I wanted more from her but was too cowardly to tell her. Did I want to sleep with her? Yes! I wanted to lie down with her, to hear the music of her little snores, the pathetic sighs, the tossings that enraptured me through the grate. I wanted to clutch her wrist when she tried to get up in the night and hold her back for her own protection. I wanted relief from my own nightmares. With her beside me, every night would dreamlessly unfurl.
Or so I thought.
Dieter was studying just as hard as I was; I knew Sonia also had an exam that week. From all the door slamming, Pete’s comings and goings, he had nothing scheduled. He’d started taking Pascal around with him. They went out to modify signage and didn’t come back until after one. The slamming door woke me and their midnight snack kept me up—Kropotkin this and Kropotkin that from downstairs. Sonia’s light came on. I whispered down, “Tell them to shut up.”
“No,” she answered. “Pete’s laughing.”
He did seem almost his old self. A few nights before, I came across him watching the off-air signal on the TV and asked about Dede. Instead of brushing me off, he said, “I’m worried. She’s always been a country club brat. Now she’s a pothead too.”
“She’s a pothead?”
“I use marijuana responsibly, Zed. Pea’s stoned all the time. You wouldn’t believe how sweet she used to be. I’d love her to move here. I could be more of an influence. But they’ll just use her to keep tabs on me.”
“They shouldn’t be allowed,” I said.
“What?”
“Families. They should make a law.”
Pete laughed.
I was glad not to see Professor Kopanyev when I took my Russian Lit exam on Friday. They had grad students for monitors, one of whom wrote on the board that we could pick up our final papers in Kopanyev’s office after the test. Not caring to read his reactionary comments, I didn’t go. That’s what I told myself; the truth was my feelings were still hurt.
Later, while Sonia cooked supper, I sat in the kitchen and read out the classified ads from the newspaper I’d brought home. “Kits. Large two-bedroom basement suite. $450. No pets.”
“I couldn’t live in a basement,” she said. “I’d get depressed.”
We heard laughter in the vestibule, the door percussing, then a curious metallic sound accompanying Pete and Pascal down the hall. They laughed into the kitchen carrying hardware store bags. Pete dumped out the contents of one in the middle of the floor: chains. This sparked more hilarity. I noticed their slitted eyes, that Pascal was trembling, his hair wet. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.
Pete: “He went for a swim.”
“At Wreck Beach!” Pascal crowed.
“Oh my God,” Sonia said. “You’ll catch pneumonia.”
He was shivering as though he already had it. She snatched a tea towel and, forcing him into a chair, began to dry his hair. Pete lifted one of the chains out of the pile and wound it around Pascal, their laughter soundless now, Pascal stomping his feet as Pete took a padlock from one of the other bags and secured the chain. Sonia tossed the towel on the table in disgust. She disapprov
ed of drugs, too, though for a different reason: they led to inappropriate glee. Until all the bombs were defused, frivolity of any kind offended her.
On her way back to the stove, she tripped over the hardware bags. “Is this all for the action?”
Pascal: “Not all of it! No, siree!”
Howls now.
“Well, get it out of here!”
“How?” Pascal asked. Both his arms were chained to his sides.
Pete stuffed a piece of bread in his mouth, margarined another, and rolled it into a tube for Pascal. Every time Pascal went to take a bite, Pete plucked it back. They were hysterical now.
“Get this stuff out of my way!” Sonia shouted, and Pete finally gathered up the remaining chains and bags, leaving Pascal Houdinied to the chair with a cigar of bread hanging from his mouth.
“You are so immature,” Sonia told him when Pete had gone. “What have you done about finding a place to live?” She waved the wooden spoon in his sheepish face.
I went upstairs to get the key from Pete, who laughed as he gave it to me. I didn’t. It had just occurred to me that Sonia might invite Pascal to move with us.
“We’re just fooling around, Zed,” Pete said. “Lighten up.”
Back in the kitchen, I freed Pascal. As he stood, the chains loosened, the chair dropped back on its four feet, and he slunk away with the irons uncoiling behind him. Sonia turned a bowl of biscuit dough out onto the table and began a furious kneading. “I’m going to find out what his problem is,” she told me. “What happened with his parents. It had better be good.”
That night I dreamed I was back in my childhood home looking out the kitchen window. Something was wrong with the trees. All the trunks were charred, yet I couldn’t remember any fire. It took me another minute to notice the pairs of tattered shoulders behind the trees, the children hiding in the ashscape, young children if they actually thought they were concealed. Somewhere, someone was sobbing. Even without looking around, I knew who it was. Who else would feel so much grief for children who would never be born and who would die so horribly?
I sat up in bed. The ceiling was pretty with the light coming from the grate. “Sonia?” I called down. “Are you all right?”
Pascal’s face appeared, distraught. “I can’t get her to stop.”
By the time I got downstairs they were in the kitchen, Sonia in her nightie, hovering over the burner, her dishevelled hair hanging too near the glowing coil. Pascal was pleading with her to move back, to turn the stove off. He was in pyjamas too, a pair of striped bottoms and a blank white T-shirt. When he saw me, relief wrote itself on his face. “What’s the matter with her? Is she crazy or something?”
“What did you do to her?” I put my arm around Sonia, who burst into sobs again as I led her away. “Turn off the stove,” I told Pascal. “Do you want to burn the place down?”
When we reached Sonia’s room, I closed the door behind us, shutting Pascal out. She flung herself on the bed and, gathering all her stuffed animals to her, almost seemed to keen. “Did he do something to you?” I asked.
Her face was buried in the plush bodies, but her head moved back and forth. “Then what happened? Tell me.”
“I can’t even say it! Make him tell you!”
He was right there when I opened the door again, shoulders bowed, hair flopping in his face. He came in and stood on the braided rug. Sonia sat up, eyes glistening and wide, staring back at him. I couldn’t tell what was passing between them at that moment but the snare of a feeling tightened round my neck. Finally Sonia said, “Let her touch it.”
Pascal sat on the bed, drawing his right leg up so it lay alongside Sonia, pulling the pyjama cuff to his knee. “You can actually feel it,” Sonia told me.
“His leg?” I didn’t want to.
She beckoned me over, took my reluctant hand, and guided it toward Pascal’s naked shin. When I glanced at him, I saw embarrassment radiating off him.
“Do you feel it?” Sonia asked.
The leg was hot and covered with wiry hairs. She made me stroke it. I drew back. “What is that?”
“Cancer,” she said.
He tucked the leg under himself and turned away. I thought he might be crying too, but when I asked him if it hurt he looked at me with pure exasperation. “No! I wouldn’t even have noticed except I was putting on my shin pads. For soccer. Man, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it! If I’d kept my mouth shut, none of this would have happened!”
“Have you been to a doctor?”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Jane,” said Sonia. “Tell him to go home. He has to go home.”
Pascal: “I’ll just take off again. They can’t make me. They think they can, but they can’t.”
“Make you what?” I asked.
He threw up his hands. “They want to cut it off.”
“But you’ll die,” Sonia cried.
“Everybody dies. I’m not going around like a gimp the rest of my life.”
“You won’t. You’ll get a proth—”
“Oh sure. A peg leg. I can hear it now. ‘Here, Peggy. Here, Peggy.’”
“You could be like Terry Fox,” she told him. “You could be an example.”
He shook his head. “Have you ever seen those movies of him? I’d feel like a tool hopping around like that.”
“Jane,” Sonia implored, as though he actually cared what I thought. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s too young. Tell him.”
It was too horrible. I couldn’t think of anything to say except what my mother always said when there was any sort of crisis. “I think we should all go to bed.”
“Good idea,” said Sonia feverishly. “We’ll have a good night’s sleep and in the morning we’ll make a plan.” Without a word, Pascal stalked out, back to his makeshift room, his hiding place. “Pascal!” Sonia called after him. “You’re not going to run away from us, are you?”
2004
Joe Jr. brought Simon home that afternoon. My office is at the front of the house, facing the street, so I had advance notice of their coming. (Here’s something else to worry about: do they talk this loudly because they’re plugged in, or is this premature hearing loss?) I got up from the computer—page 22!—and watched them from the window, the Labrador of the guitar case and the mastiff of the cello set down beside them on the sidewalk. At first they seemed to be arguing, then I recognized the outraged tones of agreement, Simon striking out at the air while Joe Jr. shook his tufts in sympathetic disgust. Someone coming along on the same side of the street caught sight of them and hurried across. Who in the world, I wondered, would be afraid of a teenager with a cello?
Then boots on the wooden porch. There might have been horses at the door. They burst in, instrument cases colliding, one of them letting loose a stream of really shocking invective. “I’m not fucking even going to call her,” Simon said, and I guessed the whole story, that all this emoting had to do with a girl. Joe Jr. shushed him, “She’s always home,” which could have been a reference to me or the love interest. During the valiant struggle to get their boots off, they didn’t speak at all.
It embarrasses Joe Jr. when I’m eager in front of his friends so I waited a few minutes before going out, six minutes by the clock on my computer screen, time enough for them to half-empty the fridge. Every container was out, all the lids confused, the diminishing smorg spread out between them as they sub-vocalized between mouthfuls. “Hello,” I said and they sprang back like startled carnivores off their quarry.
Joe Jr.: “Thanks for the heart attack.”
Simon was back to not seeing me, though I saw him because his acne glowed. Supposedly they have miracle cures now—gone the hell of tetracycline, the shame of the Ten-O-Six pad. But poor Simon is incurable. ( Joe Jr., luckily, hasn’t had to suffer the way his father did.) “How was school?” I asked.
Joe Jr. fed himself a chipful of salsa in lieu of a reply.
“Not too boring?” I asked.
&
nbsp; “Mom.” He glanced at Simon, who had his neon chin tucked into his shoulder to avoid me.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
Vsyo normalno?
“Yes!” he snapped.
So much for the new mother-son communication. I’d promised to tell him the rest of my story but, apparently, he didn’t want to hear it any more. Slinking off, smarting despite how I had been dreading confessing to him, I left them to make chewing sounds at each other.
Earlier in the day, transcribing Chekhov’s letter, I read this one too: Nobody wants to understand me. Everybody is stupid and unjust. I’m in a bad temper and speak nonsense. My family breathes easier when I go out. Evidently it’s viral. Now they’ve got it too. It must be the wonderful weather, the scented air, the flouncy trees—enough to put anyone in a foul mood. Plus, I was getting no work done, which is fine when you have no work, but when you actually do, it’s frustrating.
I stumped back to the computer and just sat there.
Joe got home from the hospital a few hours later, just as my bad mood was peaking. He washed his hands in the kitchen, sliced the bread on the cutting board. Over at the stove, I manned the ladle. “Not so much,” I told him. “It’s just us.”
“Where’s Joey?”
“He went out somewhere with Simon.”
“Did he skip today?”
“How would I know?”
I set a bowl of soup in front of him. Before picking up his spoon, he paused to scratch all over his head with both hands, hair standing at attention, imagined flakes swirling and descending over his bowl. “Mmm,” he said, tucking in. “Good.”
After a few spoonfuls, he noticed my disgust. “What?” he asked.
“You just seasoned your soup with dandruff!”
His shoulders sagged, but he carried on—buttering his bread, dipping it in his bowl. Finally, he mustered his courage. “What’s wrong, Jane?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re presenting differently.” Then he looked around the room. If I hadn’t spent an hour concocting soup (after tracking down the blade of the food processor that Maria had secreted away), if I hadn’t undone Maria, he would have noticed right away. She leaves this vinegary miasma behind. I thought of her departure that afternoon, trudging out to the guzzler with her belongings in a half-dozen plastic bags—change of clothes, plastic shoes and wallet, even her own rags—while her pimp idled out front, ruining the climate.
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