“If there’s nothing brewing at the Union, I’ll meet you there. Okay?”
“Okay. Will you wipe Jonah’s face and get him out of his high chair while I get my stuff upstairs. Katie should be here, soon.”
I did as I was asked. Then Jonah conned me into chasing him around the first floor. While we were at it, Katie arrived with her two children, Christy and Ryan, who stood shyly by for about a minute, then joined in the action. By the time Claire came down the steps with her purse and the diaper bag over her shoulder and her uniform on a hanger, the first floor was like a daycare center for hyperactive children.
“Oh, great,” she said, “get them all riled up and then send them off with us.”
“That’s the idea,” I said as I whizzed by, chasing Christy into the kitchen.
It took some time to tear the children away from the game, but finally everyone was ready to go. Claire hung back while the others went outside. We kissed deeply, then held one another.
“Can I pick you up after work again?” I asked.
“Oh, shoot,” she said. “That’s what I forgot to ask you about. Susie wants me to go out for a drink after I get off. Katie and Tony are both going out, too, so they can’t watch Jonah. Would you mind?”
“Not at all. I don’t have to go to Siegel’s today. We’ll work something out. What time will Katie bring Jonah back?”
“About seven o’clock. He should go right to bed. He’s always beat after spending the day with Christy and Ryan.”
We kissed once more, and she went out. I stood looking out through the thick glass window in the front door as she walked to the car, her hair gleaming like corn silk in the sunshine. She got in and they drove off. I sighed deeply and went back into the kitchen to clean up breakfast.
When I went to the university, half-an-hour later, I walked west for a change and turned up Maryland Avenue, which brought me to a side door of the Union. When I entered, I noticed immediately it was very quiet. I went up to the ballroom and found it nearly deserted. Carl and Bill Ascher sat at the usual table, but they looked uncharacteristically casual, with their feet up on the table and their chairs leaned back. Bill saw me approaching.
“Well, well, well,” he said, “another loyal striker. Or are you coming from the big rally?”
“What big rally?”
“You could hardly have missed it if you came by Mitchell Hall.”
“I haven’t been over that way. What’s up?”
I looked at Carl, but he was staring at his boots up on the table.
“The chancellor has finessed us. His little announcement about students having to make up class work and exams for this semester has everyone in an uproar. They’ve forgotten all about the war in Vietnam.”
“I’m not following this,” I said.
“It’s simple,” Bill said. “Nobody wants to make any sacrifices. They expected the chancellor to let them strike and still give them full credit for their courses. There are guys over in ’Nam getting their heads shot off, but these assholes can’t even put in a little extra studying over the summer for the sake of waking up the country. It’s pathetic.”
“What do they want?” I asked.
“Are you going to make me spell out their pathetic little demand? They want to be given their mid-term grade if they were passing and they want the option to take an incomplete if they weren’t. No muss, no fuss, no risk. They get to play at being political activists and pay nothing for the privilege. I’d like to strangle every one of them.”
“It’s human nature, Bill,” said Carl, finally. “I keep telling you …”
“Well, fuck human nature, then!”
“Seems to me human nature is already fucked,” said Carl, deadpan.
Bill was about to launch into a fierce rebuttal when Carl’s words sunk in.
“Well,” he said, “it’s about time you admitted that.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “These people want to strike and still get full credit for their courses, the courses they haven’t finished?”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Carl.
“Seems pretty hypocritical” I said.
“Bingo,” said Bill.
“You know,” said Carl, “I wouldn’t mind it if this was led by people who opposed the strike. You’d expect them to be bummed about it. But it was strikers who organized this protest—overnight, it seems—and, as you can see by how deserted this place is, a lot of strikers are taking part in it.”
“I wish they’d put that much energy into the strike,” said Bill.
“Some of them did,” said Carl. “What amazes me is they can protest this with equal energy. It’s like protesting on behalf of starving people one day and the next day protesting because you didn’t get cake for dessert.”
“Speaking of cake,” I said, “to put it another way, they want to have their cake and eat it, too.”
“Here, here!” said Bill.
“What do we do, now?” I asked.
Carl dragged his feet off the table and plunked them down on the floor. He looked like a soldier about to go on a forced march.
“We hold our anti-war classes and hope somebody shows up.”
At that moment, I sensed movement behind me.
“Uh-oh,” said Bill.
I turned to see a half-dozen police officers in riot gear standing at the door as an officer with gold trim on his cap approached us. He stopped ten feet before us, as if we had some easily communicable disease, and looked over our head as he spoke.
“At the direction of the chancellor of university and the mayor of Milwaukee, I hereby order you to vacate these premises within the next half-hour. If you have not exited the building within that half-hour, you will be subject to arrest.”
With that, he turned on his heels and strode back to his men, who parted to let him through, then followed him out.
“The chancellor isn’t wasting any time,” said Carl.
“He created a diversion and now he’s taking advantage of it,” said Bill. “He’s a good tactician. The bastard.”
“Is this the end of the strike?” I asked.
“We were planning to end it today, anyway,” said Carl. “They can’t kick us out of a place we were going to leave voluntarily. We’ll just thank the chancellor nicely for cooperating with our request that the school be shut down and announce our continuing war education program. Two can play at tactics.”
“We could have used a few more officers like you over in ’Nam,” said Bill, smiling impishly.
Carl gave him a long, serious look.
“Okay, okay,” said Bill, “so it was a lousy joke.”
Carl gathered up the strike committee’s papers, stuffed them into an accordion-pleated file folder, and tied it closed. The three of us walked down the steps, through the lobby, and out the main entrance of the Union, where a gaggle of local reporters converged on us and thrust microphones into our faces. Bill and I let Carl step forward to field the questions, which he did with great aplomb. By the time the reporters were ready to let us go, Carl had convinced them the strike had achieved everything the committee had intended it to.
I was almost convinced—but not quite. The news about strikers being more interested in their grades than in the strike had thrown me for a loop. It was hard to believe that so many of my fellow students were that mercenary. It had never occurred to me that I should get credit for work I’d voluntarily chosen not to complete. The chancellor’s decision to allow us to make up class work over the summer seemed generous, in that respect, though his intention had been to derail the strike. Did he really suspect his offer would be protested? He’d probably realized non-strikers would be upset by it and would resent the strikers, but I couldn’t believe he would have expected the strikers to be upset by something he saw as a concession. That part had been serendipitous for him. It made me angry at the strikers. Was this the meager level of self-sacrifice they were able to maintain? How could they hope to win a no
nviolent war against the war in Vietnam if they weren’t willing to make such a small sacrifice for the sake of the cause? As Bill has said, it was pathetic.
I went with Bill and Carl to the Lutheran student center, across from the campus, to help write publicity material for the war education classes, but my heart wasn’t in it. I had a feeling very few people would turn out for them. Suddenly, it seemed as if nobody cared.
In the middle of the afternoon, I dragged myself home. The day had turned unseasonably hot and humid. I installed myself on the couch in the living room, in front of a box fan, with a glass of ice water. Tony arrived soon afterward and went off to shower. When he came back, he joined me in front of the fan with a beer. I told him what had come down on campus and, to his credit, he was just as disappointed as I was. Sitting there with him, without Claire at the forefront of my thoughts for a change, I remembered how much I’d liked him when we first met—how much I still liked him.
The fact that I was making love with his wife suddenly seemed selfish and ridiculous. What right did I have to insert myself in their relationship, even if—some would say especially if—they were having problems? What kind of friend did something like that? On the other hand, Claire was my friend, too. She and I had become much closer than Tony and I had ever been, well before she and I had started making love. Perhaps my relationship with her was a natural progression from an intimate friendship.
The world was changing. Maybe more of this sort of thing was going to be happening. Maybe Tony and I would remain friends, even after he found out about Claire and me. Maybe we could even share Jonah. Maybe we would all live together—his new girlfriend might even join us—and operate as a community, instead of as isolated nuclear couples. As I sat next to Tony on the couch, enjoying his humor and his straightforward attitudes, I couldn’t help hoping it could happen. I was tempted to tell him, right then and there, what I was thinking. But I couldn’t summon the courage. It was easier to just hang out with him and let it slide.
The phone rang. It was Claire. I could tell immediately that she was not at work. She sounded too relaxed. It turned out she’d called the nursing home to get her hours for the next week and gotten an aide who wanted to work a double shift and take off another night, so she’d traded.
“I just wasn’t up for bedpans, tonight,” she said “but it’s too damn hot to hang out in the house. Want to go to a movie?”
“Tony’s here, too,” I said, suddenly feeling guilty.
“He’s supposed to have his own plans. That’s why you were going to babysit Jonah.”
“What about Jonah?”
“Katie’s going to keep him overnight. We could see Paint Your Wagon. I hear it’s great. Tony can come, too, if he’s not doing anything else. I’m not in the mood for romance, anyway. I just want to have a good time and cool off.”
“I’ll see what he says.”
Two weeks before this, the three of us going to a movie together would have been an event of no consequence. We did a lot of things together, with and without Jonah. But as I set down the phone and went into the living room to talk to Tony, I felt as guilty and sneaky as an adolescent lying to his parents. Tony didn’t seem to notice anything, but, then, it was often hard to tell with him. It turned out that his plans had fallen through and he was hot and tired, too. Like Claire, he was ready to do anything to get out of the heat.
We picked up pizzas for supper and took them over to Katie’s, so Tony could see Jonah before going to the movie. But, as it turned out, Jonah was more interested in his cousins than in his father, so we went to an early showing of the movie. We stuck to small talk in the car. The atmosphere wasn’t exactly tense, but it wasn’t as relaxed as it had always been when the three of us went out. I wondered if Tony noticed that. At the theater, Claire sat between Tony and me.
Knowing nothing about the plot of Paint Your Wagon, which had been a Broadway musical, I expected it to be pure entertainment, something to relax me and allow me to forget everything that was going on among the three of us. At first, it looked as if that was exactly what it would be. Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood were gold miners in the Old West, living in an all-male camp with their fellow miners. They were also best friends, Eastwood playing the straight man to Marvin’s crazy drunk. Then Jean Seberg appeared, looking, it struck me, not unlike the beautiful woman sitting next to me. Marvin and Eastwood both fell in love with her. They were ready to tear one another apart over her, until they realized that, if she would have them, they could both be her husband, the way Mormon men of that era often had two or more wives.
By this time, I was on the edge of my seat. Why not? I thought. Why couldn’t something like that work?
It jibed perfectly with what I’d been thinking that afternoon. Why should I have to give up Tony to have Claire? Why should Claire have to give up Tony to have me? The world was changing. All kinds of new arrangements might be possible. For the first time, I felt hopeful we could all stay together and be happy.
Unfortunately, the movie plot did not follow this line. Jealousy between the men reared its ugly head, first, but that was brought under control. Then Jean Seberg’s desire for respectability started to grow, a desire that did not leave room for the trio’s unconventional arrangement. In the end, Lee Marvin ended up going off on his own. It was, to my mind, a sad ending, but not, I decided, an inevitable one. We were not living in an age of conventional morality. There was room for new experiments. Perhaps the three of us would be marital pioneers. I was sensible enough to know that if something like that was going to happen, it was going to happen slowly and organically, not on the strength of momentary inspiration from a movie plot. But it gave me hope.
11
THE NEXT DAY, IWORKED at the liquor store until nine o’clock and came home to babysit for Jonah. Tony was going out—presumably with Alicia, although he didn’t say—and Claire had rescheduled her drink after work with Susie. I was happy to go home and do nothing. Between the strike and my new relationship with Claire, I was emotionally exhausted. Jonah was already in bed when I got there, and Tony was out the door in minutes. I sat in the living room reading a novel until I heard Jonah crying. I went to him right away, hoping to settle him down before he woke up completely. But he was wide-awake and upset. I had to pick him up and walk him around the dark room for half-an-hour before he finally quieted down and, slowly but surely, went back to sleep.
Even more tired by then, I went back downstairs, intending to veg out in front of the TV. I walked around the corner into the living room and nearly jumped through the ceiling in surprise. Kolvacik was sitting on the sofa, lighting up a joint.
“How the hell did you get in here?” I said.
He took a long hit, held it in, and cocked an eye at me. Then he blew out the smoke in a long, slow stream.
“I broke a window,” he said.
“I didn’t hear any—”
“Through the door, for Christ’s sake. It was open. Sit down, Meyer, we need to talk. Want a hit?”
“No thanks.”
“Suit yourself. Me, I think more clearly when I’m high.”
“That remains to be seen. What’s on your mind?”
“Claire.”
Suddenly, my stomach hurt.
“And Tony.”
“What about them.”
He looked me square in the eye. “You’re fucking her, aren’t you?”
I looked away, then back at him.
“I’m not ‘fucking’ anybody.”
“Fucking, rolling in the hay, boinking, making love—whatever you want to call it. It’s all the same to me.”
“Well, it’s not all the same to me.”
“Call it any pretty name you want, asshole. You’re still fucking your friend’s—my friend’s—wife. How can you live with yourself?”
“He’s not exactly being attentive to her these days, you know. He’s living in another room and probably sleeping with his pal Alicia—even as we speak.”
�
�That’s about him and Claire. This is about you.”
“You can’t separate the two!”
“I’m doing it.”
“Then I don’t want to talk about it.”
I stood up and headed toward the stairs.
He followed me.
“I told you a long time ago not fuck with them, Meyer, and I meant it.” I stopped at the foot of the stairs and faced him.
“It’s none of your damn business, Kolvacik. You’re just jealous because you want to fuck her yourself. Well, I want a lot more than that. I love her. And if Tony doesn’t appreciate her enough to stay with her, I’m going to be there for her. And you can tell him that.”
Suddenly, the anger seemed to drain out of him. He took a deep breath and exhaled, looking at the floor. “I’m not sure he even knows about it, yet.”
He raised his head and pinned me with his eyes again. “You’ve got to tell him. You can’t pretend he doesn’t live here and you can’t pretend he’s not your friend. What you’re doing is bad enough. Not owning up to it is even worse. That’s all I came to say.”
He went to the door, then turned to me again. “Even if you love her, man, it’s wrong. It’s just wrong.”
He yanked open the door and went out. I stood where I was and listened to him start up his car and drive off. Jonah started crying again. I wanted to go upstairs, but I felt paralyzed. I stood there, rooted to the spot. Finally, I shook my head hard to bring myself back to reality and went to him. He was all twisted up in his bed sheet, sweaty and frightened. I unwound the sheet and picked him up. He put his head on my shoulder and started sucking his thumb. I sat down in the rocking chair and rocked him back and forth, singing an Italian lullaby Mina had taught me one night.
“Nina, nana, coco la dela mama
Nina, nana, coco la del papa”
I sang it over and over again, comforting myself as well as him. For a long time, his eyes were open. Then his eyelids began to flutter and droop, and he fell back to sleep. I was just about to get up and put him back into his bed, when I heard the front door open, then footsteps on the stairs. I was afraid Kolvacik had come back. But it was even worse. A moment later, Tony stood silhouetted in the doorway.
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