Movement (8 page)

“Boxes,” he reminded her. “I'm an expert on boxes.”

“Thank you,” she said, resigned to his kindness.

First he carried the perforated shoe box up to the attic. Then the boxes of books to the second floor. “All these books,” he exclaimed. “Too heavy”? she asked. “No, he did this all day, remember, boxes? But
so many.
When did she find time to relax?”

“Intellectuals get uptight relaxing,” interrupted Mandy from the second floor landing. She introduced herself as a “radikeel med student,” explaining she always tried to forget most of what she learned right after the exam. She said she was into med school for the nitrous oxide. She would catch them later, after her anatomy lab test.

Susan also met Christine, melting down the mahogany stairway in a long black skirt and a pink satin bed jacket. Phil had told her that Christine was a lesbian, that she read Tarot cards and made papier-mâché puppets. Christine smiled demurely and Susan could see she wasn't one of the dyke feminists, but more the Natalie Barney type. She had read a lot about lesbians this year.

Suddenly Susan felt like Sister Joseph Marie on a missionary field assignment. She was wearing a perfectly acceptable—even wrinkled—work shirt, and jeans. But she was sure they could all see through to her starched habits.

This was a new experience, a growth situation, as Guy would say in his own earnest, tedious way. She would learn a lot. She might learn how not to be straight. Hip? Mellow? She might at least learn the vocabulary.

“I hope you'll like it here,” Phil said as he fixed the tea. “You and ….?”

She was confused, blushing at her confusion.

“Our refugee?” he asked.

“Oh, my cat's name is Imogene.” Her laughter was the only visible trembling until she closed the door to her room.

Lying on the paisley floor pillow, she pulled Carol's old purple sleeping bag over herself. Just fine. She had had enough of beds for a while. Beds with embroidered pillowcases and floral sheets. Making their bed had been like laying a goddamn altar. This was simple, comfortable, easy to convert. She hated excess. Comfortable. Two in the morning. Comfortable, but she couldn't sleep. She ran through the projects in her mind. The layout was done. The darkroom time was scheduled. She could easily have the paste-up finished by tomorrow. Yes, work was fine. She and Hilary would go to the National Ballet on Saturday night. Sunday, she would take the yoga class. Letters. Maybe a good read, listening to the Pachelbel
Canon
. Sleep. She tried to remember the gigue after the
Canon
. Sleep, she whispered gently. Everything was settled. Why couldn't she sleep? What did acid rock sound like anyway?

The sherry was just for hospitality, she scolded herself as she poured a glass now. Probably shouldn't have bought it. She had passed by Brights three times that day. She didn't buy it for herself, more for a cordiality to friends. She would reassure her visitors that this new home was a civilized place, not a soiled old rooming house three blocks from wino land. A spare, but civilized refuge. She had stored the marriage accessories in Robert's damp basement: her linens, the unbreakable dinnerware and the silver chafing dishes. She felt like an immigrant. Like her mother and Rosa Kaburi. The bottle of sherry would ease the transition. If someone dropped by, she would feel less like an evacuee and more like a passenger on an ocean liner—temporarily, voluntarily homeless. A traveler.

“This is the day of my liberation.” She poured another sherry.

The woody sweetness of Guy's parents' living room used to encompass her after one glass of their Bristol Cream. Sherry was one part of the Thompson legacy she would keep. The only alcohol her mother ever drank was cans of Budweiser from the fridge. Sour. Urine before it made its own. Sherry would lend Susan a certain elegance, an immunity.

“This is the day of my liberation.” All evening she had been telling herself how immune she was. “This is the day of my liberation.” A claim. “This is the day of my liberation.” A litany. Without an amen.

So what had she sacrificed with the divorce? Their move to Cuba had become a pipe dream. Children she could have with someone else. Or on her own. Hilary was right. What a fixation to think you needed to have a man to have a child.

Ruth Thompson had been as sweet as her woodened sherry the last time they spoke. “I'm so sorry,” her mother-in-law had sighed. “I had no idea you children were having troubles. Yes, probably it
is
wise to part, for a while. What will you ever do with all your things? The silver? Oh, no, don't send it back. That sounds so permanent.” (Susan knew, deep down, that Ruth liked her. Once, after two hours of civilized sherry, Ruth had told Susan she admired, maybe even envied her independence.) “Well, all right, send it back if that makes you happier. I'll keep it here for you. Yes, yes, we shall continue to write.”

Now, pouring herself a second glass—the
last
glass, she promised—Susan lay back down on the paisley pillow. “Do this in remembrance of me,” she thought foggily. How impressed she had been when Guy told her that four generations of his family had attended Berkeley. That he had relatives, ancestors and descendants in the state legislature. A half-million dollar vineyard harvested into a two million dollar shopping center. Sherry in the parlor. Women confined in the needlepoint. The first afternoon she had alone with Ruth, they spent tranquillizing the poodles so they could be clipped.

Still, there had been security as a Thompson. There had always been that security with Guy, before there was anything else and after there was nothing else.

Someone was sitting outside her window the next morning, in the maple tree. Susan thought it was the telephone man at first. She felt relieved because they had promised to install the line yesterday and she really couldn't work without a telephone. Then she noticed that the cat was under his arm. Shaking herself into morning, she realized it was Phil. He rapped lightly on the window and she let him in.

“You looked like the telephone man,” she said stupidly.

“More like a cat burglar, eh?”

They both laughed.

“We got on real well last night,” Phil said. “She snuggled right up to me. I left the window open. Must have gone out to stalk zebra in the night 'cause when I woke up, there she was, shivering out on a limb. Say,” he touched Susan's bare shoulder, “so are you.”

The window was still open and it was starting to snow. She was wearing a summer nightgown. He asked if he could join her under the sleeping bag. She breathed deeply and nodded, repeating to herself, “This is the day of my liberation.”

The second time that morning she was wakened by the telephone man. The doorbell rang downstairs. A knock on her door. A loud voice. “Telephone man.”

“Got to get to work, man,” Phil yawned sleepily. “You can put Imogene in my room when you leave the house. The window's closed now.”

After that, she went up often to visit the little stray. She insisted on maintaining separate quarters, relishing the security of her own room. During the day she went to
The Artisan;
afterwards she usually had a meeting. He was steady at his packing plant job and spent evenings with his flute and Imogene in the attic. Late at night, he would float into her room, shut off the ceiling lamp and light one of his sandalwood candles. So they came together in the dark and on weekends in High Park.

How she was touched by the compliments from this pony-tailed freak. Susan had always been embarrassed, helpless about her straightness. (Such was the dowry from parochial school. Better on discipline than décolleté. When she graduated from St. Mary's, she couldn't understand the difference between mix n' match. Even now, in her jeans, she looked like an unfaded ingénue. Her Levis were zipped when everyone else's were buttoned.) Phil thoroughly enjoyed being her tutor. With him, she heard her first Procol Harum, ate her first hashcake and came close to taking acid.

“How are you doing, dear?” Susan's mother phoned from California, ever hopeful of redeeming her back to civilization.

“Mellow,” Susan said, inhaling a joint and reaching over to stroke Phil's thigh.

“Beg pardon,” her mother said.

“Fine,” Susan said, remembering the old language, assuming her former, solid voice, her cheerful daughter tone. “Did I tell you about my cat?”

Susan began to understand how much of her generation she had missed. In college, she had no time between her cafeteria job and her studying for the Grateful Dead or Big Sur. She read
Rolling Stone
once, for a journalism class. She visited Haight Ashbury twice, taking out-of-town relatives on Sunday afternoons to view the hippies. Marriage had been a worthy sequel, working every night, reading together on Saturdays. (They tried earnestly to learn about Canada, another guilt to expiate. Not only were they white, middle-class and heterosexual, but they were American.) Perhaps that was what was wrong with marriage. Perhaps it was just too straight.

Although Phil had never read
The Artisan,
he said if that's how she spent her time, he wanted to see a copy. He didn't get beyond the last couple of pages. He always read from the back. They had some good talks about the office and he stopped making women's lib jokes after a while.

“Watch it,” she had said, “I'm serious about feminism.”

“I can see that” he laughed, adding, “politics is cool.”

“Politics is not
cool,
” she said.

He couldn't handle the dialectic.

“I know you'd agree with me if we discussed it,” she said.

But he didn't feel like it.

So she accepted a moratorium on socialism, feminism and the counterculture because she was
tired
of figuring things out. She wrote to her friends that he was a nice guy, a natural non-sexist. They had no struggles about authority or fucking or washing the dishes.

“We can still be friends, can't we?” Guy telephoned to ask. “I thought we might get together.”

“Sure,” she said, out of guilt, holding the cat close to her cheek.

“The abortion,” he said abruptly. “We never really talked about it. You made that decision, you know. I want to deal with that. I feel I'm still mourning.…”

“Friends,” she spoke absently, wistfully, directly into the cat's eyes.

“Don't get ironic with me, Susan. I'm just trying to be open with you.”

Sometimes Phil talked about a muse in Afghanistan, a spiritual leader, but she did not press him about it. Whenever he talked about leaving, he promised he would bequeath her the half-melted sandalwood candles, a collection of Blind Faith, a finely polished cheroot and one of his flutes.

He wasn't a very good flautist. And whenever
she
thought of leaving
him,
it was because she didn't really like his music.

It would be up to the cat to choose between them.

Someone Else's
Baby

The Food Coop met every Saturday morning at ten. Ted waved to Maureen as she parked her bike. He was armed with someone else's baby, a kid who was being raised in his commune.

Maureen helped him weigh the tomatoes.

“We broke up a couple of weeks ago,” he told her. “It was Maryanna's decision. I still don't get it. She claims there isn't anyone else. What did I do?”

Maureen shrugged and tried to look sympathetic. Ted was all right for a man—gentle and pretty un-oppressive. “Maybe Maryanna just wanted to be alone.”

“But we had so many plans.”

Maureen was glad he didn't notice her brief smile.

He explained all he could explain. “I told her she could sleep with anyone she wanted. I even offered to introduce her to this new guy at the Institute. You know I've always been a supporter of women's liberation.”

Maureen inched over to get some hazelnuts before they were all gone.

“Why couldn't we work it out together? We're still the same people we were four years ago. I
do not
get it. It's happening to so many of our friends. Marni and Joe. Chris and Peter. The women are leaving. And, yeah, you left Mort. It was the same with you.” He tried not to look accusing.

She nodded.

“Listen, it would really help to talk about this some time,” he said. “How about dinner next Friday?”

“Can't Friday,” she said.

He shifted the baby higher on his hip.

“And it wasn't exactly the same with me.” She secured the basket to the back of her bicycle. “I mean I decided to be a lesbian.”

He fell silent for a moment.

“See you next Saturday morning,” he said. He told the baby to wave good-bye, because now, both his arms were full.

VI

Single Exposure

Susan was sitting alone in the quiet restaurant, leafing through
The Four-Gated City
for her place. She moved the candle closer. Perfect. Or as near to it as anything in the last three days. The redwood panelling reminded her of restaurants on Fisherman's Wharf—that and the kitsch fishnets with the colored glass balls. At the rate of service around here, the waiter may have gone to San Francisco for the fish.

Ever since Susan had moved to England last year, she had planned to come to Cornwall. Was it a silly Arthurian romance to hike along the cliffs in early winter? Susan had counted on and dreaded the trip. She needed the time alone to think and to work on the book, but she was afraid she would be lonely. The first two mornings had been hell—long and steep. Today hadn't been so tough.

The door opened with a draft and three men arguing. The short one blurted anxiously. “I didn't mean to lay an authoritarian trip on you about the time.” After a long, rather ceremonial debate, they took the table next to Susan.

She opened her pendant watch—eight o'clock. Where was the bloody waiter? She had to get back to her room and plan the shots for tomorrow. Pushing the menu obviously off to the edge of the table, she returned to Lessing.