Movement (19 page)

“Oh fuck the risk,” said Elizabeth, knocking her wine on the rug. White wine, which wouldn't stain. “What kind of risk is it for her to come flying through town, just another stopover on her world adventure.”

“If you want a world adventure,” Mike said, “you can have a world adventure.”

“Don't put her up as a model to me, mister. I'll bloody well pick my own models.”

Possessed by sudden clarity, Susan said, “Why don't you have this argument after I leave. I'm not going to play Aunt Minerva from out of town catching all the flak. This sounds like an old fight, where I got off years ago.”

Elizabeth looked at her, widening her eyes slightly, as if suddenly remembering their reconciliation in the Skylight Room last week.

“It's true,” Elizabeth said, “that we only have a few hours until Susan's train leaves.”

The wine helped. Anecdotes flowed as they reached the bottom of the Muscadet. More photo booth shots. Pictures of everyone candid. Posed. Overexposed. Libertarian to Marxist. Lapsed Catholic. Lesbian lovers. Marriage therapy. Camping holiday in the Durdoyne. The wine eased the purposefulness of the exchange. Did she know Harry was out of the looney bin, working as a mail clerk? A certain draft resister had turned hippie autocrat. Glenn had come out at the Gay Rights March. A too-tender friend was swallowed by barbiturates. Maybe they could take a holiday in California this year? They would write, yes, as often as possible. Mike might make it out to LA for a conference in May. They still planned to have kids. In fact, Elizabeth thought her crazy mood this week was due to her period being late; they had been trying to get pregnant for a year. Susan poured herself another glass to drown the jealousy with more gossip. Was that poet still seducing ingénue reviewers? Did the Italian daughter next door ever run away to the theatre?

By eleven o'clock, she almost regretted having to leave, but she said, “The train goes soon. I really should call a cab.”

“The phone is still in the bedroom,” said Mike.

“At least we can make the call for her,” Elizabeth said with a strange urgency that sounded larger than hospitality.

Bedrooms aren't that painful, thought Susan, grateful that she wasn't drunk enough to have said it aloud. She walked briskly into the bedroom and picked up the telephone. Telephone book. Yellow pages, she thought hazily, lazily, and dialed information.

“If the number you want is not in the directory, hang on for a moment and an operator will answer.” Rattle. Rattle. “If the number you want is not in the directory.…” Rattle. Rattle. “If the number.…” Rattle. Rattle.

Lyndon was shaking the bars of a cage while two larger monmonkeys sat back and stared. Three monkeys in a cage. She was still sober enough to count.

A scream.

Her voice. The wine. The monkeys. She would not throw up.

“Oh god, Susan, we should have told you,” Elizabeth rushed into the bedroom. “They frighten everybody. They still scare me every once in a while. But Mike insists that we keep them here. It's the warmest room.”

Susan was silent.

Mike negotiated with the cab dispatcher. The two women walked into the front room and sat on the cushions. Elizabeth took her hand.

“Oh, Susan, I wish we had more time. To ourselves.”

Mike walked out, brushing his hands and trying not to laugh at the chaos. Susan stared at the corners of his involuntary smile, tempted herself to dissolve the whole evening in hilarity. However, she could not laugh. She could not cry. And she would not throw up.

“We both love you,” Elizabeth said, holding Mike by one hand and Susan by the other.

Mike reached over and separated the drapes. The cab's headlights shot in like a flash bulb.

Susan kissed them each good-bye.

Mrs. Delaney's
Dollar

“Quiet. The nice, quiet oriental waitress.” That's how they ask for me. I do a good job, distinguishing between french fries and hashbrowns. Remembering the ketchup. Holding the mayonnaise.

“China doll,” Mr. Pearson calls me, although I came from Kyoto at age twelve and my name on the peppermint plastic badge is three syllables too long for Chinese.

I try to ignore Mr. Pearson and wait on the silent man by the window. I've never seen this one before and am filled with relief. Maybe I'll never see him again. A drifter. You can tell by the way he slipped into the booth before I cleared the table, before I had a chance to pick up the dollar that Mrs. Delaney left me for her Golden Gate Breakfast, the eggs sunny side up. More sun than we'll see in San Francisco for a month.

Good girl. I am Mrs. Delaney's good girl even though she cannot be more than five years older. Even though she is an inch shorter than I, leprechauns being as tiny as China dolls.

So this silent man is in a hurry. Good, no chatter. The more people at my station, the more tips. One. Two. Three less days until retirement.

“Coffee,” he murmurs, almost shyly, so that I like him. “And scrambled eggs with toast.”

“Yes,” I nod, giving him one of my few morning smiles. After noon, my mouth gets looser and I find it easier to smile. More tips then. I have practiced smiling in the morning, but it comes off as crooked and spoils my digestion so is not worth the gratuities. Speaking of which, where is Mrs. Delaney's dollar? Some days she is forgetful and returns to the café to deliver it straight into my hands, clucking about her “good girl,” her “quiet one.” Today I did see her leave it on the table before shuffling out the door. The silent man is trying not to notice me as I move the ashtray and the creamer in search of my money. He looks like he wishes he had brought a newspaper to read. Instead, he stares out at Market Street, peering through the rain for cosmic answers. He does not smell of meths or alcohol.

“My dollar,” I say, to be precise about the amount and the ownership. “Have you seen my dollar?”

Stunned, he looks. Numb. He should try for Hollywood this man. Maybe he is surprised I speak English. I already know that he does. “Coffee.” He has betrayed his fluency. “Scrambled eggs.”

“My tip,” I say louder, loud enough to embarrass him in front of the other customers. But what does he care? A drifter. That's the trouble with drifters. Quick, easy turnover. But because they are swift, they are often invisible in their coming and going and taking.

“Have you seen my money?” I ask simply.

“No,” he answers.

I have made it too simple.

Doris is eyeing me from the cash register. Get a move on, she is thinking, can't you see I have a line waiting here. Where's your engine, girl? I like Doris. No nonsense.

So I file the orders with the chef and tell the girls who are waiting for their plates what has happened. Hannah and Ethel look over at Mr. Drifter and nod. Marlene says, “the bastard.”

Marlene follows me back to the table. His scrambled eggs are just cool enough to be unpleasant. He will suffer in silence. Drifters aren't complainers. Not Mr. Quiet Guys who meditate on the rain. Thieves maybe. But never complainers.

“So you say it was a dollar, honey,” asks Marlene in her loud Detroit voice. Twangy. She is proud of that twang. She never says “Detroit.” She says “Motown.”

“Yes,” I say, setting the watery eggs on the table, instead of in his lap where I would prefer to put them. “Mrs. Delaney's usual tip.”

“Well, it's got to be here somewhere, honey,” says Marlene, louder than I have heard her talk even when she was hailing the 38 Geary bus across two lanes of traffic.

“‘Scuse me,” she says to the drifter. “But you didn't happen to see a dollar belonging to my friend here?”

“No,” he says quietly into the soggy eggs, picking up a knife to butter the cold toast.

“Anybody around here seen a dollar?” Marlene asks. “Anybody seen Kimiko's tip?”

Startled faces. Shaking heads. A few appropriately critical glances to the man slowly eating his cold eggs.

Other work to do. You don't wait around all morning for a dollar even if you can't spare a smile until noon.

I am delivering three orders of Blueberry Mountain Pancakes when I notice Hannah and Ethel running the carpet sweeper. What are they doing? We never sweep 'till after closing. Even then, it's not the waitresses. The union would never stand for it. Whatever they're doing, I hope Doris, who is the union steward, doesn't catch them. I've had enough bad feelings today.

“Sir, could you move your feet?” says Hannah.

“Must be around here somewhere,” says Ethel. “Haven't seen a dollar, have you?”

He is beginning the last quarter of toast. Without removing his mouth from the slice, he shakes his head. Suddenly I notice how tired he looks, lost.

“Hey, China doll,” calls Mr. Pearson. “How about a little more coffee, quiet one.”

I pour the coffee and move quickly from Mr. Pearson before he can touch me. Quiet one! I think of the silent screams of Hiroshima every time they say “quiet one.” I'm so eager to escape that I find myself going to fill the thief's cup. He regards me through astonished, bloodshot eyes and says, “Thank you.”

The blueberry pancakes need more butter and Mr. Pearson thinks he'll have a second donut after all.

By the time I turn around, Mr. Drifter has vanished. Julio has cleaned the table. In the ashtray is Mrs. Delaney's dollar. And beneath it, a shiny silver dollar. And beneath that, a note. “How lucky I was to get the quiet one.”

XI

Side/Stroke

Her head was still swimming from the wine and her race to the station as the train pulled through shadows of Toronto rowhouses. Susan sat back in her compartment, watching the moon flood Lake Ontario. She was filled with tears. In mourning. She was leaving herself behind and going home. Leaving friends in England and Canada to see if she were still an American. Crazy really, after six years away. Only one more year was needed. All the cells in your body change every seven years.

She tried to concentrate on the book. Horrible scene about a dog-cat. Terrible book,
Memoirs of a Survivor.
Cheap fantasia. Why hadn't she stopped with
The Summer Before The Dark?
Susan never thought this would happen; she had run out of Lessing to read. She took a long drink of wine.

Another glass of red wine. Thick, black Ontario sky with silver spurs. Pretzels.

Susan was in the bar car now with a dozen other midnight travellers. The couple to one side was playing pinochle.

“I'm not mourning Canada or England,” she heard herself saying, “so much as I'm mourning the woman I was six years ago.” Susan was talking to an older woman—probably fifty or fifty-five—and a man in his thirties. The man ordered a bottle of burgundy.

“I miss that idealism,” Susan said, “that basic morality.” Why was she rambling on to these strangers. Maybe what you said when travelling didn't count. Promises, confessions, secrets—they would all disappear at the time of arrival.

“In the days when I left the States,” she continued, “I was young enough to take risks.”

“Well, you had faith,” said the older woman.

“People don't use words like ‘faith' nowadays,” smiled Susan.

He laughed. “Or words like ‘nowadays.' You two sound like frontier moralists. Makes me feel ancient.”

“Sometimes I like feeling ancient,” reflected Susan.

She poured herself another glass of wine. She was looking forward to California and the good, cheap wine. She never drank much when she lived there. Maybe that's one of the reasons she had had to leave.

The next morning they all met in the breakfast car at the edge of the Prairies. Funny how you set yourself up when you travel, thought Susan. You check out people for politics, education, style, like choosing partners across a dance floor. The talk came easily after the coffee was poured.

Susan remembered now: Adam was a lawyer going to a consumer rights conference in Vancouver. He was very like Guy in some ways, except for the blond hair. A nice man, actually. The woman was immediately sympathetic. Sara Gold: Jewish mother: a professor of English in Victoria. Her fingers were heavily ringed in turquoise, silver and ivory. No wedding band. Susan always wondered how women of that generation had survived without wedding bands.

“You can go back and reread the other Lessing books,” Sara suggested. Susan acknowledged that she often returned to
The Golden Notebook
for solace. Adam said he liked
Briefing For A Descent Into Hell
the best.

“My wife was really into Lessing just before the divorce,” he said. “I read her to see what was happening between us.”

“And did you find out?” asked Sara.

“I found out that it wasn't Lessing that was between us,” he smiled.

Susan nodded kindly. She liked him. She was glad she no longer felt responsibility as a feminist for every divorce in town.

They talked into the late morning, until the land was so flat that you could see everywhere and nowhere at once. They would stop in Winnipeg for an hour-and-a-half. Sara suggested that they all get off the train and eat lunch at the Prince George.

Susan was disappointed. She liked eating on the train. It reassured her that travelling was a normal way of life. But she also liked Adam and Sara. They had relieved her of those usual travelling jitters—of shyness, boredom, anger at being stuck in inane conversations about West End London shows or about how we really watch too much TV or about World War II in St. Louis. She was enjoying their company.

In fact, she liked
him
a lot. An affair would be safe. After two nights, they would split for opposite ends of the coast. He was bright, too much of a fuzzy liberal, but funny. Did Sara disapprove of her flirting? Maybe Susan just imagined it.

Winnipeg was clear and warm. “There are always three or four crystal days like this in the fall,” according to Sara. “But I look forward to winter, to the security of warmth under the snow.”