Movement (24 page)

“Telephone. Finally.” The low pitched ring continued as she lifted the receiver. She reached over and flicked off her travel alarm clock. Seven o'clock.

Susan drew the curtains and she was disappointed that the city was fogged in even more than the night before. There was usually some break at sunrise. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees because frost edged the window panes. Susan switched on the kettle and turned back to work.

Sisterhood

Pat walked along the sidewalk, looking up. Only one cell of Montreal Police Station Numéro Cinq seemed to be occupied. She saw the figure of a bulky young man, straight brown hair straggling to the collar of the beige sports jacket. It could have been an alcoholic hard-hat or a thug, maybe a plainclothes policeman off duty. But Pat knew it was her sister Rosemary. Rosemary, hunched and tense, trying to ignore the smell of the horseshit from the stable and the rattling of the poker chips upstairs. Rosemary reading or writing one of her Marxist texts.

Pat remembered Rosemary running up these slippery grey steps when they were kids, playing tag on the way home from St. Paul's. No one dared follow. She had warned Rosemary, twenty-five years ago, that she would get locked up if she kept behaving like
that.

“Ms. Jordan, please.”

“Upstairs, lady, in the Bridal Suite.”

Pat winced, less irritated by the sergeant's sarcasm than by what it predicted about Rosemary's mood. By now she should be used to the effect of her sister's tempers on the rest of humanity. She had defended Rosemary's right to play football. Gradually she, too, became keen on sports and followed Rosemary's progress with a fine track record of her own. Pat had explained to their parents why Rosemary wanted to divorce the American draft resister three years after she had explained why Rosemary wanted to marry him. And that had decided Pat, herself, against wifery.

“Ms. Jordan,” she said, slurring the “Ms.” and hating herself for lacking Rosemary's strength. “Ms.” was simple enough: why did she pretend to be slurring “Miss” or “Mrs.”? The West Indian guard considered her with remote curiosity. Not the usual sort of visitor, she supposed he was thinking, not like Rosemary's ragged radical friends in their $50 hiking boots. She looked like a “proper doc,” still in her respectable clothes. She knew Rosemary would hate the pantyhose. They always got into a godalmighty row about them causing yeast infections. Rosemary giving
her
medical advice.

But then, they had always been collaborators. At least she had always collaborated in Rosemary's schemes. In some ways, Rosemary had been the classic older sister. All Pat had to do was follow the red-splattered road. When Pat played Saint Joan in high school, she just played Rosemary. However, their parents always recognized that Pat was the sensible one, the accomplished one. Graduating at the top of her medical class. Even Rosemary accepted her bourgeois credentials when Pat started teaching a self-examination course for women.

Pat could smell the horseshit as she approached the south corridor. She recalled her panic, years ago, when Rosemary said she was going to steal one of the horses. They were on their way home from a novena. She dared Rosemary to go ahead and promised to come along for the ride if she smuggled the mare.

“Bitch.” The guard's voice carried down the corridor. “Just watchit, bitch.”

Pat tried to ignore the shouting by listening to the quick clacking of her platform heels on the linoleum floor.

“I'm Dr. Jordan.” She heard herself assuming the propriety that Rosemary detested. And she saw it disarm the guard.

“I would like to see my sister.”

XIV

Rondo

The waiter carried a piece of Larry Blake's special angel food cake to the next table and placed it in front of the jock in the pin-striped shirt. Susan regarded her own diluted Coke and wondered how much longer she would wait for Guy. She wanted to order a coffee, but then she wouldn't have enough money for bus fare home. It was true that she was going to get an advance for the book. She would only have to wait a while longer. So here she was, ten years out of college and still counting her pennies for coffee while the varsity champ was swallowing the restaurant whole.

“Hello, excuse me, but are you Susan Campbell?”

Susan regarded a girl in jeans and a Mexican flowered blouse. Of course she wasn't a girl; she was a college student, a young woman. Susan would be offended if some man were to call her a girl. But in looking at her and in looking at herself, this stranger seemed a girl. Susan realized that the girl must be paging her for Guy. At least, she thought, he was courteous enough to try and reach me.

“Yes,” she said at last. “I'm Susan Campbell.”

“I'm very pleased to meet you,” said the girl shyly. “I'm Debbie Guthrie and I wanted to thank you for that talk you gave about Marya Terazinya and your book last week.”

Susan tried to hide her disappointment with a late and crooked smile.

The young woman considered her closely, as if she were inspecting for forgery. “When you spoke at Dwindle Hall last Friday,” she said and then looked embarrassed at having to remind Susan of her own lecture. “I was particularly struck by what you said about fiction overlapping with biography, about art and politics.”

“Won't you sit down?” asked Susan, hoping that the stranger (Now she had a name. What was it? Debbie, of course. But it was too late to say, “Won't you sit down, Debbie?”) would leave so she could save her coffee money. Susan realized she was too tired to walk home. Where the hell was Guy?

“Well, I wouldn't want to impose,” said Debbie, as she slid nimbly into the booth. “But when I first noticed you over here, the waiter said you were expecting someone. When they didn't show up after all this time, I thought you might like the company.”

Silence.

Debbie was frowning now. She seemed to be recalling just what she had said, checking that all the words came out in order.

“Who knows,” said Susan, truly confused, herself, about whether she was being polite or masochistic or maternal. “Maybe I was waiting for you.”

Debbie stuttered, “I, I, I mean I just wanted to pay my respects.”

At this they both laughed. The younger woman looked more comfortable.

“If you really don't mind the company,” said Debbie, “I'll join you for a cup of coffee.”

A little overwhelmed by all this energy, Susan signaled the waiter to bring two coffees, hoping desperately that Debbie had enough money to pay for her own. Or perhaps Guy would show up and loan her money to pay for both of them.

She was pretty, Susan noticed, with those coils of red black hair curled around her clear, moon face. She had that innocent, natural chic which Revlon was selling now. However, Debbie was the genuine article. She had saved herself so much time not using mascara. She had saved herself whole days, perhaps weeks, in her freedom from buying and applying and removing make-up. But then, Susan couldn't blame herself for the eye shadow in her own history. Everyone used it then. Maybelline made you visible. Guy might not have noticed her otherwise. Susan had stopped wearing it in England, not out of ideology, but for vanity. The mascara had made grey dabs on her cheeks (worse with midnight blue), scars from this new, damp climate. When she first looked in the mirror with naked eyes, she seemed younger. But Susan doubted that she had ever looked as young as her present companion. Forgetting fatigue, Susan wondered what she might learn from this younger person.

Debbie was talking rapidly, nervously. “I've always admired your work. And from what I could discern, your whole approach to life.”

Susan nodded uneasily.

“You see, I want to write,” said Debbie. “I do write. I have fourteen notebooks of journal. I think the journal is becoming a genre in its own right. Don't you think so?”

Embarrassed by such admiration, Susan was also scared that if she accepted it, she would be caught in a charade. She had had these chats with younger women before and they left her uncomfortable for hours afterward.

“Well, I liked
Journal of A Solitude
,” said Susan simply. Maybe if she sounded dull enough, Debbie would just go away. Then, ashamed of her coldness, Susan realized how disappointed and angry she was that Guy had not shown up. Just another element of the familiar suspense that played between them. Would they cross the border? Would that fucker ever get to Phoenix? Susan smiled at the memory of their escape to Canada, at the other borders they had crossed. How many were left?

Debbie smiled. “
Journal of A Solitude,
oh yes,” she agreed and followed with a rapturous critique of May Sarton. Then Debbie told her breathlessly that she was in her last term at Berkeley, majoring in English literature, caught between graduate school and just getting on with her writing. Did Susan ever have to make that choice?

Susan remembered how she used to give oral resumes like this, detailing what she presumed to be her accomplishments as well as her current insights and questions, so the other person would think her worthy of attention. At that time, life seemed to be a set of necessary hurdles, the passing of which granted you some kind of wisdom.

“I've done OK in the writing classes here,” Debbie continued. “But what does that tell me? All the professors are men. I'm really committed to the development of matriarchal language. Like what Mary Daly's doing.”

Susan felt a twinge of rivalry when Debbie mentioned Mary Daly. This dissolved as she continued listening.

She was listening not so much to content as to pattern. Lately this had happened to her often: she was claimed by students, asked for advice, and then presented with their autobiographies.

“This may sound stupid,” Debbie began to say as she twisted the long chain of seed beads which hung from her neck. (Weren't they out of style now, these three-foot strands? Susan thought about her own Brazilian beads and wondered whether students were still as careful to get their jewelry from the correct political groups. Well, at least Debbie wasn't one of these punk rockers with safety pins in her cheeks.) “Don't worry about sounding stupid,” Susan said kindly.

Debbie still looked concerned. Susan wanted to reach out and say, “It's OK, love.” But she didn't know what “it” was. She could not figure out what the other woman wanted from her.

“Well,” said Debbie, “do you
like
writing? I mean last week you described it as painful. So
why
do you do it?”

“There is no
why,
” said Susan, surprised at the swift sureness of her answer. “
How
was always the problem.
How
was I going to pay the rent?
How
was I going to afford the beans?
How
was I going to find the courage and perseverance to keep writing when people weren't publishing my books?”

This all sounded rather grand, Susan recognized, a bit abstract. But she had never asked herself why. Now she felt like a phony, playing Jane Fonda, playing Lillian Hellman. Was it a mortal sin to impersonate a writer?

“Yes, I do like writing,” she finally answered the question.

Debbie was astonishingly familiar with Susan's work. She asked questions about articles Susan had forgotten. Almost forgotten. Debbie was full of questions. Do you work early in the morning? A set number of hours a day? Debbie wasn't so much interested in how to find the courage to write as she was in how to publish any or all of her fourteen journals. This made sense to Susan.

“But you'll need a job to support yourself,” said Susan. “Something to pay the rent.”

“There's family money,” said Debbie. “I'm sure I could get a loan from my parents.”

Family money, thought Susan, staring down at the empty Coke glass to hide her—what was it—her anger, jealousy, sense of unfairness. How much easier it would have been for her if she had had money or encouragement or even interest from her family. Was it fair? Ridiculous question, Susan realized, swallowing the resentment. Debbie did not determine her own pedigree. Fairness was a belief she should have left behind in Catholic school. Was it fair that Mohammed had to stay in Agadir to support his family? Was it fair that Alexander died of bronchitis in a damp London flat so far from the warmth of Zimbabwe? Was it fair that her own mother still worked at age seventy in a downtown diner? No, life was not fair. Life was making the most of what you had—persuading envy into generosity and guilt into compassion. There was enough of the world to go around.

“We used your Celtic book in my ethnic relations course,” Debbie said. “I would love to go to Ireland and write journals. That's where my grandmother is from. How do you feel about the Celtic work now?”

Susan was torn between talking about her research and just making an excuse to leave. But the damn waiter hadn't even brought the coffee yet. So she told Debbie about the Cornish work, about that dreadful winter afternoon on the cliffs, about Ronald's death, about the dwindling correspondence from Andre and Colin.

“Why did you go to London?” Debbie demanded abruptly. The urgency held Susan closely, as if Debbie were trying to photograph some illusive self image. In focusing the camera, however, Debbie would have to notice that the background was a mirror which would reflect both of them. Whatever came out of this talk wouldn't be a portrait of a role model but a photo of the two of them together. And Susan doubted that Debbie's depth of field was large enough to get them both in focus.

Susan answered that she had hoped moving to England would end the boredom and guilt and pain of her marriage. It was the
beginning
for which she wasn't prepared. The mitosis. One cannot control growth. (If she couldn't control her own, how could she help Debbie, she wondered. No, she stopped herself. Debbie hadn't asked for help.)

Debbie said she often thought about giving up men altogether, but right now she was relating to a good, non-sexist guy. “I'll stay as long as it's not oppressive.”