“I work at the fucking docks, okay? What the hell is there to talk about? ‘Today I loaded a couple tons of ball-bearings, honey.’ Is that what you want to hear? It’s just bullshit.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean, what were you thinking about while you loaded them? Were you thinking about us, about Jonah and me? Were you thinking about school? Were you thinking about what you want to do with your life? That kind of stuff.”
“I don’t think about shit.”
“I don’t believe that, Tony.”
He stopped pacing.
“So you don’t fucking believe it. That’s your choice. But it’s true. I’m too goddamned bored and tired to think. What do you want me to do, make something up to entertain you?”
“I don’t want to be entertained, Tony. I want to be loved. I want you to share yourself with me. It’s like there’s a wall of glass between us, lately. I see you, but I can’t touch you.”
“I don’t have any energy left, Claire. I work my butt off at the docks, I go to classes, I study, I take care of Jonah, and I fall into bed. That’s all I can do, right now. I don’t have any energy for self-examination. If you’re so sure there’s something going on with me, why don’t you tell me what it is.”
“I’ll tell you what I think it is. I think you’re bored shitless—not just with work and school, but with me and maybe with Jonah, too.”
“That’s not true!”
“What, the Jonah part or the me part?”
“Well … both.”
“Nice try, Tony. You just confirmed what I’m saying.”
“Oh, fuck, I don’t know what’s going on! No, I don’t feel that close to you, right now. I don’t know why. I thought sharing the house would liven things up, take the pressure off of us, but I think it’s just made it worse.”
“I know. Now you have lots of new ways to avoid talking to me.”
“Look, Claire, I’m tired, and I have to get up in a couple of hours. We can talk about this another time.”
“When?”
“What do you mean, when? Some other time. Tomorrow.”
“What time?”
Tony laughed. “What time?” he said.
“I’m not kidding, Tony. I won’t let this slide.”
“Jesus. All right, let’s go out for supper. Maybe John will stay with Jonah. You can talk to your heart’s content.”
“We can talk, Tony. We.”
“All right, we. Can I go to sleep, now?”
Claire grudgingly agreed to end the discussion. The light went out, Tony got back in bed, and all was quiet. I don’t know how quickly either of them got back to sleep. I wasn’t able to drop off until after the sky had started to lighten.
I did babysit Jonah the following evening. He was at a delightful age. We’d celebrated his first birthday in January, and in February he’d started walking. By March, he was confident enough on his feet I could chase him around the house, which he loved. Tony and Claire left at six o’clock. I fed myself and Jonah. Then the fun began. Claire had warned me about getting him too worked up when he had a full stomach, but he wasn’t about to be denied.
“Wun, wun,” he kept saying, toddling down the hall and back again to tug on my hand. “Wun, wun.”
The routine was for me to chase him from the kitchen into the living room, where he’d throw himself on the sofa and I’d tickle him. He’d let out a high-pitched giggle that never failed to crack me up. Then it was back to the kitchen, where we’d start all over again.
We must have done it three dozen times that night, until, finally, even he’d had enough. When I’d finished tickling him for the last time, I lay down on the floor on my back, weak from laughing. He lay on his belly on the sofa, staring at me, his soft brown hair disheveled, his big brown eyes shining with tears of laughter. I felt quite close to him in that moment, and I sensed he felt close to me. I’d looked into his eyes before, of course, but this time, with both of us relaxed and unguarded, I looked deeper than ever before.
What I saw is difficult to describe, but seeing it was one of the most profound experiences of my life. I saw not a child but a mature being, a soul, if you will, with experiences far beyond those Jonah had lived in a year. It was a being whose knowledge of life was equal to my own—perhaps even superior. It’s an understatement to say it was an adult consciousness, but it was at least that, and I’d never seen anything like it in the eyes of a child.
Suddenly I knew, with the force of a revelation, that none of us enters this life a tabula rasa, as behaviorists would like us to believe. We bring with us a distinct, full-blown personality, perhaps in the genes, perhaps in some less definable area of consciousness, which makes us, from the beginning, more than we can communicate, more than anyone can perceive—except in an extraordinary moment such as the one I experienced with Jonah.
I’d always loved Jonah, as much for himself as for his blood connection to Claire, but this deepened my feelings for him. The prospect of caring for this little soul, nurturing him into adulthood, was suddenly very attractive. For the first time in my life, I knew for certain I wanted to raise children. I also knew that, if it came down to it, I wouldn’t shrink from the task of raising Jonah.
This added a new dimension to my feelings for Claire. Combined with what I’d heard through the bedroom door the night before, this realization made room for a possibility I’d only entertained fleetingly before. Now it re-entered my mind and settled down for a long stay. What if Claire and Tony broke up? What if Tony ran off to the west to avoid the draft? What if I married Claire and adopted Jonah? The possibility was terrifying and thrilling. It was more than I could bear to contemplate for long. But suddenly it became a possible future, something that might really happen.
When Claire and Tony came home, a few hours later, Jonah was asleep on the sofa, clutching the dirty remnant of a receiving blanket that was his frequent companion. The two of them looked happier together than they had for some time, but somehow that didn’t bother me. Only time would tell if they belonged together anymore, and that long look into Jonah’s eyes had given me a much-expanded sense of time. I could wait.
The three of use stood over Jonah as he lay there on his back, the blanket pressed against his cheek, his belly rising and falling with each breath. I think we felt closer, more like family, in that moment than we ever had before and ever would again.
7
THE PARTY ENDED IN MAY. I recall the exact moment. I was leaving for class on the morning of May fifth, a clear, beautiful spring day. As I came out the front door and down the steps, Jonathan was coming up the walk, looking tired and disheveled. Previously, when our paths had crossed at that hour, he’d only nodded and continued on into the house, where, I assumed, he went straight to bed. But this time he stopped in front of me, blocking the walk. He looked wild-eyed and determined.
“Do you know what happened, yesterday?” he said.
I said I didn’t.
“Four students were killed by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio. They were demonstrating peacefully, unarmed, and they were shot down. Dead. This is it, John. They’ve gone too far. There’s going to be a national student strike. We’re shutting down the universities tomorrow, all over the country. School is bullshit. It’s time for people to sit up and take notice. It’s time to end this fucking war.”
Without awaiting a reply, he pushed by me and up the steps. I was too shocked to try to stop him. Non-violent student protestors shot and killed? On a college campus in the United States of America? By National Guardsmen—citizen soldiers like … my father? It didn’t seem possible. Did the misunderstanding between our generations run that deep? Were they ready to shoot us down for thinking differently from them?
I had to know more. I ran down to the convenience store on the corner and bought a copy of the Milwaukee Sentinel. There, on the front page, was the photo that was to become emblematic of the event: a woman rising from beside the body of her dead friend, turning towa
rd the camera, screaming and crying. It had happened. It had really happened. Four students shot down in cold blood by men who could have been their fathers or brothers. No one was safe anymore.
I ran back to the house with the paper. Claire sat at the kitchen table feeding Jonah, who was in his high chair. The baby spoon in her hand was filled with strained peaches.
“Look at this,” I said, my voice dulled by shock.
I dropped the paper onto the table beside her. She read the headline; she looked closely at the picture. Jonah reached for the spoon full of peaches. “How?” she said. “Why?”
“Nobody seems to know. It’s not clear if an order was given. Apparently, the guardsmen aren’t saying much.”
“This could be one of us,” she said. “This could be Jonathan or Tony or you or me. It’s crazy. The world’s gone crazy.”
Jonah started squawking. Claire brought the spoon to his mouth. He gobbled down the peaches and immediately started agitating for more.
“Jonathan says there’s going to be a student strike, starting tomorrow.”
“Oh, great! So more people can get shot. You’re not going to get involved, are you?”
“I don’t know. Probably. I feel like things have gone too far, this time. First, the bombing of Cambodia, now this. Even that guy gunning his car into the crowd at the Street Festival on Sunday, right here in Milwaukee, and getting away with it. People are ready to kill us to stop us from thinking the way we do. I’m not going to let them scare me.”
Claire was feeding Jonah furiously, now, spooning the food into his mouth so quickly he could hardly keep up.
“Goddamn men,” she said. “Do you have to be such fucking idealists? You can’t make them like you. Why don’t you just stay away from them?”
“Why don’t they just stay away from us? We don’t want their fucking war!”
“Then don’t go. But don’t get yourself killed here, instead. What good will that do?”
“I’m not planning to get killed. But sometimes you’ve got to let them know that you’re watching them, that they can’t push you around.”
“But they can push you around. They can push you around all they want. You can’t change that.”
“That’s what they told black people during the civil rights movement. But when enough people got involved, they had to listen.”
Claire was furiously tearing up a piece of toast over Jonah’s tray. “Sure, after they killed a few dozen people. It just isn’t worth it.”
“How do you know if it’s worth it? You’ve never had to worry about the draft.”
“Never had to worry about the draft? I have a husband who could be taken away any minute if he fucks up in school!”
“Such as he is,” I murmured, regretting the words immediately.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she said, throwing the last bit of toast down in front of Jonah.
“Oh, don’t play coy with me, Claire. I hear you two arguing at night.”
She glared at me as she brushed the crumbs off her hands onto Jonah’s tray, but didn’t speak. Then she got up, went to the sink, and started washing her hands, her back to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was a stupid thing to say. I try not to listen in, but, the fact is …”
I wanted to say it. I wanted to say, “The fact is I love you and I care about what’s happening to you.” But I was afraid of verbalizing something so explosive. Claire dried her hands on a towel lying on the counter, her back still to me. When she turned around, tears were running down her cheeks.
I went to her, took her in my arms, and started kissing the tears from her cheeks. Then I kissed her on the mouth and she kissed me back. Our arms encircling one another, we pressed our bodies together, kissing passionately. Now that the border had been crossed, we touched each other hungrily. If we’d been alone, I believe we would have made love right then and there. But suddenly Claire interposed her hands and pushed me back.
“No, John. We can’t. Look.”
I looked over my shoulder to see Jonah staring up at us, fascinated and bewildered. I winked at him and he smiled. “See,” I said. “He doesn’t mind.”
I stepped toward her again, but she put a hand flat on my chest.
“No. This is wrong. I could do this so easily. But it’s wrong.”
“It’s not wrong if we love each another.”
“Yes, it is. You can’t just marry someone and have a kid and then start falling in love with someone else.”
“Sometimes you can’t help it.”
“I can help it. I can say no.”
“Claire, I’ve got to tell you—”
“No! Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it. We’ve got to live in the same house together, you and me and Tony and Jonah. I don’t want to hear something that’ll make that impossible. Things have been going fine. You’ve been hanging out with Tim. Tony and I have been going to bed early—together. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way it has to be.”
I had the feeling she was trying to convince herself, but I had the good sense not to say that. “Okay. If that’s the way it has to be, I’ll back off. But I’m always here for you, in whatever way you need me.”
“John,” she said, moving in closer again, “promise me you won’t get involved with this strike.”
“I can’t promise that, Claire. I’ve been ignoring things for too long. I have to do something. Just because I got lucky with the draft, I can’t pretend the problem has gone away. People like Tony and Tim can still get drafted, our brothers and friends are still over there. I owe it to them to protest what’s going on.”
“What about me? Don’t you owe me anything? I thought you were about to say you loved me.”
“That’s a low blow, Claire. You have no right to push me away and then use my feelings against me. I’m going to school.”
I picked up my knapsack, turned on my heels, and walked down the hall and out the front door. When I got to the sidewalk, I heard the door open behind me, but I kept walking.
“John,” said Claire from the porch, “I’m sorry. That was stupid.”
I stopped and looked toward her. A gentle spring breeze blew her long, fine hair across her face. She pushed it back.
“I’m sorry, too, Claire. Really sorry.”
I walked on. I should have been thinking about Kent State, but all I could think about was Claire standing on our porch, her lovely hair blowing in the breeze, and the feel of her body pressed against mine. I considered turning back and trying to convince her to make love with me, but I was afraid of being rejected again.
The campus was buzzing. There were clusters of people all over engaged in heated discussions. When I got to my English class, late, they were not discussing the history of American literature but current American reality. A small woman with red “Afro” hair—not a regular member of the class— was standing in the aisle, arguing vehemently with the professor, a middle-aged man always neatly dressed in a white shirt and tie. That day, his tie was loose and his sleeves rolled up, revealing thick salt-and-pepper hair on his forearms. He was so agitated he didn’t even notice me come in.
“I still don’t see what good it’ll do anybody to shut down this campus,” he was saying to his adversary. “Education’s what people need in order to fight ignorance in this country. It’s ignorance that leads to wars like this—ignorance of other cultures, ignorance of human motivation, ignorance of our own historical shortcomings. What good will it do to stop people from learning?”
“Schools aren’t the only place to learn, professor. There’s a big world out there. We can’t just pretend it doesn’t exist. We’ve got to learn to deal with it. Any guy in this class could be sent over to Vietnam. What good would American literature do him if he got himself killed in a jungle on the other side of the world? Let’s make sure that can’t happen, first, then we’ll get back to American Lit.”
Most of the class, including me, cheered this speech. I
t even made our professor pause and think. But he couldn’t quite believe the rationale.
“Are you proposing that universities just stop dead until the war ends?”
“No. But they can teach about something relevant to what’s happening in the world. We want classes on Southeast Asian culture, on the history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, on the military-industrial complex, on U.S. imperialism. We want to learn about the politics determining our fate. We’re tired of learning for the sake of learning.”
Again, we cheered her on.
“What do the rest of you have to say about this?”
“I’m for it,” I said. “I’m not sure schools should teach only that stuff, but they ought to teach more of it. Maybe it’ll take a strike to convince them of that.”
“No more ‘business as usual,’” said a guy on the other side of the room.
“This is bullshit,” said a guy in the front row disdainfully. “I’m not paying to learn about contemporary politics here. I can read about that in newspapers and magazines. I want to be an English teacher. Learning about the military-industrial complex won’t help me do that.”
“But maybe it’ll help keep you from getting your ass shot off,” said the redhead. “Isn’t that worth the price of admission?”
“You say it’ll help me do that. I’m not convinced. I think we ought to—”
His words were drowned out as half-a-dozen people started talking at once. In the confusion, I could only make out bits and pieces of what people were saying.
“… don’t give a shit about the war, I want …”
“… this is more important than that …”
“… Only people with a good education can change what’s happening …”
“… and my folks would kill me if they thought I was …”
“… cut off from the rest of the world. We’ve got to stay in touch with …”
“Okay, okay,” the professor finally called out.
The room gradually quieted down.
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