Movement (3 page)

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 family 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.

Sara sat forward. “Actually, we've been talking a lot about our connection in all of this. I mean, of course the phone is tapped. But you should feel there's a way to contact us if you need help. Maybe a code word. Maybe ‘maple leaf' or ‘beaver.'”

“Or ‘help,'” laughed Susan. “We'll be the safe ones.”

They spent the evening counting up immigration credits—Susan spoke French and had relatives in Canada; he had more years in university.

“Kind of classist, isn't it?” asked Guy.

“Every country has its problems,” said Hank.

“I have five more points than you,” said Susan.

“Doesn't count,” said Sara. “A wife goes through on her husband's points.”

Irritated, Susan thought about this new women's lib business, and resolved to do some reading. She wondered, dopily, what Guy would do if she became a raving feminist.

Hank picked up the booklet and ripped off the cover. “Don't let them see it when they search you at the border. Stick it inside one of your chemistry texts or somewhere.”

The dope wore off quickly. Guy shaved his beard. Disguises were prepared in rote timelessness. Susan ironed her shirtwaist dress and set her hair. Once these chores were done, the evening lost shape. They crawled into the sleeping bags and read Hank's and Sara's new
Newsweek
before falling asleep.

The next morning, Susan jiggled out of the sleeping bag and walked over to the picture window. Grey. The fog outside the third floor window overlooking Pauline Street was as colorless as the apartment walls. Susan reheated the coffee and found some more bearclaw pastries. Were bearclaws Californian? Was she more Californian or American? Could she be a Canadian? Canada was just over the bridge. Just across the border. Only a few miles away. Canada, land of the free. No reason to believe in Canada. (“What an idealist,” her brother Bill had said. “What are the choices?” Susan had said.) So now it was to be Canada. A country big enough to believe in. Yes, she did believe they would be admitted.

“Breakfast, sir?” she said, setting a tray on the floor, next to where he lay, still cosy under the down.

“Feels more like Extreme Unction,” he said.

“Good code word.”

They laughed, as easily as if they were back in Berkeley.

Detroit was the classic exit. She recalled headlines from the '66 riots. She remembered that unmailed thank you note to Aunt Martha and Uncle Cardiologist who sent them an American flag for their wedding from Grosse Pointe. (Mother insisted it wasn't a joke.) The ride up Michigan Avenue was horrific. Every white man looked like he was about to duck into a telephone booth and emerge in a Klan hood. The blacks frightened her like no one in Oakland had scared her for years. Her racism? Their hostility? They drove past Bertram's department store where Aunt Martha had bought that pinafore when Susan was eight. (Susan's mother had inhaled sharply when she saw the pink and grey box. Bertram's was a
very
fine store. Aunt Martha always sent things from very fine stores. Mother might have sent more pink and grey boxes herself if she hadn't married a feckless sailor and moved to California.) Grey, humid Detroit heat. Petulant showers and then sudden sun evaporating everything. What if they didn't get in? Just get out of Detroit. Love it or leave it. Just get out.