The Sky Is Falling (28 page)

“
There was a small garden with a lilac tree covered in ash, and
the yellow porch smelled strongly of new paint
,” I read in halting Russian before continuing with “
I haven't decided what I'll buy
you in Moscow, but I will buy you something. Give him something to
drink. Why don't you read something interesting? Why does he
always sit right on the edge of the chair?
” and so on, and no one knew that it didn't make sense. They listened, rapt, like good little children at story time. I put a lot of expression in my voice. “
In the evening, when I'm at home, I like to talk to someone.
” When I finished, Isis wept.

Next Timo, Pete, and Dieter reported on their trip to Seattle. Pete: “There are two possible places to chain ourselves, the front gate and the workers' entrance. Obviously the front would be our first choice except there are more guards. We wouldn't have much time. If we chain ourselves by the workers' entrance, there's just the one guard in the booth where they check ID. But it would make a different statement.”

“Like the action was for their benefit?”

“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 disapproved 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.