Playground Zero

by Sarah Relyea

  Joel took up the legal pad. “Headaches, depression, Valium,” he wrote. He’d been there, though not in adolescence. What Helen needed was proper breathing, and maybe a lover. Joel and Ruth had brought yogic breathing into lovemaking, with marvelous results; now they were truly a body couple, rather than mostly a head-only one.

  The struggle had been long. He’d graduated from Harvard, and contrary to the urging of several professors had sought a job teaching in the secondary schools. Home in New York, he’d been assigned to a special-education classroom in Harlem, where he was soon overcome by a sense of the room as a place of confinement, a holding pen. A plump, unhappy young man, he’d commanded a roomful of depressed, glaring, and angry boys. As the days passed, he no longer remembered the boy he’d been, vying eagerly for grades and honors that now appeared meaningless. The boys in Joel’s classroom refused to follow him; they’d learned early on to regard school as a fraud played on them by a malevolent demon. And Joel, who for years had been enthralled by the demon, was impressed by these boys who slumped, glumly or tauntingly, in joyless classroom rows. They were enlightened, in a sense: by age eleven, they’d already thrown themselves on the gears of the machine; they would never join the Lawrence Rad Lab, or engender a nuclear bomb. Joel had much to learn from them regarding the rebel’s role.

  Now Joel, too, was running a lab—a lab of the modern soul, with the goal of replacing the American focus on conformity and technology with process and personal change, the process of human creators—of language, photographs, Happenings, and more. The lab he was gathering would produce the anarchy and energy for tearing down the old learning, founding new knowledge on a continuing renewal of self, the process goals of a creator. Learning would be released from the endless repetition of the same.

  In the beginning, he’d gathered groups of teachers and young people in a bare storefront on Alcatraz Avenue. They brought free-floating rebel energy: he had only to offer the space and propose ways of channeling the energy, and soon he was surrounded by a core group of a dozen adolescents reveling in sound, language, and improv. The rebels were followed by black and poor youths open to some form of final chance. Then there were the sons and daughters of professors—by turns eager, angry, or complacent, for they’d been passed over by parents who managed to be both aloof and hard charging, hands-off in manner but demanding of results. The brew was dangerous; there were days when Joel was sure the school would blast off or implode. But the brew was also indispensable: rebels brought a dash of the avant-garde, useful in persuading Joel’s peers, poor and black youths garnered funding from the federal government, and sons and daughters of professors could be counted on to show up. The storefront gatherings had become a school.

  During Year One, Other Paths had been buoyed by hope, though frequently on the edge of collapse. Space had been a recurring problem: when the lease on the storefront had ended, no proper replacement had been found. For a few weeks, they’d gathered in the Free Church, holding a group ceremony. Come September, they would be housed on the ground floor of Finnish Hall, an old ethnic center near the bay. No one could say how the Finnish remnant would respond to the school.

  Joel had begun preparing a book on the school and would be spending some days composing the book at home. He had long dreamed of such doubleness—a space of subversive conspiracy, balanced by a professor’s home and family. And he’d come to possess the professor’s home, though bypassing the normal hurdles—advanced degrees, scholarly research; he’d refused to be co-opted. Mornings, fog hung in the trees, exhaling a pungent odor of eucalyptus, and through the afternoon the sun shone relentlessly, drenching him in dreamy pleasure. He and Ruth had passed a summer in Barcelona; those days had returned, only more posh, for they’d been poor then. There he’d resolved to choose freely. To change the world, one needed a rebel band of one’s own; now he’d founded a rebel school.

  Joel’s book would be a success. He knew what teachers needed to hear, what would make them feel good. They had many bad feelings, marooned as they were in classrooms of young people who desperately wanted to escape. But Joel had found ways of reshaping the school trauma as a story of hope and rescue—hope for teachers who longed to transform the classroom into a space of shared learning, a community where rescue could happen. So many teachers harbored suppressed hopes of being saved by the classrooms they ran; they would find encouragement and solace in Joel’s book. And Joel, formerly programmed by the old learning, would reveal how he’d thrown it all overboard when faced with a roomful of wary, angry boys. In the schools he conjured up, anything could happen; classrooms were borne along by the energy of a spontaneous group. He would analyze the group events, drawing appealing morals for those following on the path, or simply in need of a comforting story. Joel was a purveyor of happy endings—learning found among the abandoned young, if only grown-ups would remove senseless rules and procedures.

  For a long time he’d been overwhelmed, struggling to understand the young people of Berkeley, the land of free-flowing energy. He’d been so far from them as a boy in the Bronx; he’d conformed and gone complacently through school, enjoying many honors—scholarships to Harvard and even Oxford. Then one day he’d refused. Now, finally, he was no longer alone; he had only to hang a flyer, and they came running, ready for revolution.

  Closing the legal pad, he removed a joint from a small chrome case and began to smoke. Then he carefully quenched the coal, returning the remnant to the case, and wandered out into the yard. The evening had turned cool and refreshing. Joel stood barefoot on the sloping lawn, surrounded by overgrown beach roses, and began to muse.

  Other Paths would replace the dead learning of Joel’s past. The young people would become a space of uncontrolled inner growth; through them the forms of the future would emerge, much as ever-blossoming beach roses filled the tumultuous yard. They would learn in the flowering of communal belonging that there was a heaven here.

  From the yard, Joel gazed through low trees on the world, heard the murmuring of roads fanning north and south and along the garlands of crossings unfurled under a darkened sky. The hour hung heavy. The glowing lamps of fireflies flickered in random code among the beach roses. The savage war presaged confusion, and now even the Movement was abandoning the purpose of freedom.

  The grass had grown cool and damp. Joel combed the blades absently with his toes and then lowered himself, so that he lay beneath the evening sky. A blade of grass brushed one ear; the sound of gnats droned and faded. He’d endured the escape from New York. Now he would make a clean break; California would be a refuge from the fray.

  Alice

  NOW WHEN HER mother was gone for a few breathless days with Charles and the boys, her father would spend a weekend in the Berkeley house. He passed evenings on the couch, reading a newspaper or in his cocoon, following the baseball game. They found nothing to say, even when she came through the door of the room, meaning only to make an appearance and then leave, though some compulsion urged her to the end of the couch, where she sensed her father’s body though there was nothing to say. She began wondering about the stranger. Formerly, her mother had helped her understand the person who’d been her father, so long ago; for he was changed and strangely opaque, a phenomenon known only by faraway consequences. These days there was no more counting on her mother, whose story had changed, becoming full of slander and vengeance; from now on she would have to deal with the man alone.

  Abandoned together as her mother played with Charles, Alice and her father measured each other. Though her father’s presence seemed dreary and burdensome, who could say if he was truly unapproachable? Maybe her judgment had been clouded by slander—how would she ever know? She could hardly run the charges by her father, demanding that he confirm or deny, though she would have preferred to do so. Nor could she undo or unremember them.

  In the beginning there was some squabbling—low-key and unreadable, in her father’s manner—about an old canard: Telegraph Avenue. Her mother no longer care
d about her going there, that much was clear; in any case, Alice rarely went to Telegraph anymore, except to drop by a record store. Even so, her father recalled the old problem, and one Sunday in August, as she headed for the door, he began probing.

  “Going out?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can you say where you plan to go?”

  “Just for a walk.”

  “Does your mother ask where you’re going?”

  Her mother was in Los Angeles with Charles. Was her father saying he wanted to know where she was going, or was he merely demanding to be informed, in case her mother called? There was no way of knowing.

  “You can say I’ve gone to the campus.”

  “By way of Telegraph?” he pursued.

  “Why do you care?”

  Surveying her in the usual unfathomable way, he probed further. “Do you want me to say yes, when your mother says no?”

  More and more annoyed, she made no response.

  “You should learn to rely on your own judgment,” he concluded, turning and leaving her alone in the foyer.

  A few days later, when her mother came back from L.A., the scene changed yet again, all accusations forgotten. Her mother was in the new, dreamy mood, eyes warm, tone measured and vague, as though reading a lullaby, as she mused on about Charles, and love, and the new family. There was a sense of wonders unfolding, happiness unforeseen in the cramped spaces of the old family. Her mother’s flushed and joyful face was encouraging and then crushing, even enraging: would there really be a world of love and family, Alice wondered, and if so, for whom? Maybe for mother and father, each and separately; surely not for her. Remembering her mother’s false and damning accusation of theft, she was angry and confused. And what of her father—was he any longer hers? No—he was gone. He’d been persuaded of the charges; he would regard her as a thief.

  Her mother’s dreamy mood was making her angry; she’d heard enough for now. In the house, there would be no refusing her mother, who followed her from room to room rehearsing the story, over and over, for the pleasure of rehearsal. Volleyed from one parent to the other, from a rude hoarding of words to an overwhelming gush, Alice found no place of her own. She would have to go somewhere on her own for the day or linger in the house, hearing the woman come and go talking of Tom and Charles, as though every woman were through with Tom, as though every woman would soon marry Charles.

  Alice wandered from the room even as her mother was impressing upon her the joys of love. An hour later, she passed along Telegraph following a former path, lately abandoned, hardly pausing to choose where she should go. She no longer hung around Telegraph and wondered how the group would welcome her. But they were nowhere to be found. She paused by the Med, absorbing changes in the scene.

  Suddenly Valerie appeared before her, heading for the doorway of the Med. Valerie paused long enough to laugh.

  “Long time no see,” she goaded. “We wondered where you’d gone.”

  “Nowhere,” Alice said. “Around.”

  “And now here you are. Planning to hang out?” There was a hardness in her tone.

  “No.”

  Valerie narrowed her eyes. “Well then, see ya!” And she flounced through the cafe door.

  Stung by the uncomfortable encounter, and embarrassed at being left alone on the Avenue, Alice observed Valerie moving through the scene as one who belonged. Valerie had found her out: she was an impostor, and the world of Telegraph was collapsing around her. Though she had no place here, she could refuse to run. She would seem to hang around, as though she belonged, as though she had no need of Valerie.

  A young man—eyes of blue glass, a pale face framed by jet-black hair—had nearly passed by when he saw her, alone, or so she seemed. He’d seen her on other days, on the Avenue; surely she’d been there before. Clearly enough she was no runaway, he concluded, veering toward the door of the Med but then pausing, one hand fumbling in a charade of groping in the pouch that dangled from a worn leather thong slung over one shoulder, as he scanned her face, the full mouth and wary eyes, then perused her freshly laundered top—something a boy should wear, he thought, amused, glimpsing the open cloth over her collarbone. Her jeans were clean and unfrayed, though faded and worn. And now he remembered where he’d seen her—she was one of the group around Valerie and Jim.

  She turned, responding to the young man’s eyes on her. Sea-blue in a face made ashen by a halo of dark curls, the eyes glinted like colored glass in blinding sunlight. The arms were lean and pale; and as one hand probed a leather purse, she saw the thumb, where he wore a heavy ring made from the handle of a spoon.

  He abandoned fumbling in the old leather purse and, leaning in, tapped on her arm the fingers of one hand. “Hey, have you seen Valerie?”

  Alice was unsure how to gauge the space around her, for more and more she found someone leaning in on her as the man had suddenly done. “In there,” she responded, barely moving her head as she nodded toward the cafe.

  The man glanced through the window, paused. “Oh wow,” he nodded, grooving on something. “Wow, hey, I’m Johnny.” And he held up one hand, though there was hardly any room for her to offer her own. She placed her hand in the man’s palm, and he grasped hard. Then he dropped her hand and leaned in.

  “And you, what’s your name? I know Jim and Valerie and Joe and—”

  “Alice.”

  “Hey, so you’re Alice.” He nodded, regarding her closely.

  She’d rarely conversed with a man, not even her father—though the man was only a boy, no more than seventeen or twenty. She’d come to Telegraph with the group, and the boy had seen and remembered her. They knew each other, maybe. Could he be from the commune on Derby Street, the one she’d heard about? She’d seen the house—a large, rambling wood-shingle place shared by many young people. The house was near her own. She’d passed by many times.

  The boy was already bored with her, she thought, as he turned, eyes scanning up and down the thoroughfare. Then the blue eyes searched her once more. “So, you’re hanging on the Avenue,” he nodded, and she was unsure if he was assessing her or welcoming her, acknowledging her, as people on the Avenue acknowledged others they knew. That was the common way when people were sharing space—though there were other ways, as she’d learned from her father.

  Then he remarked with a shrug, as though letting go of an afterthought, “Or you could come by the house, see some people. I can show you around.”

  Soon Johnny was leading her from the Avenue. He made plans as they walked, scheming where the cash would come from—because just before finding the babe near the Med, he’d been confronted by a dealer, Marlboro Man, demanding money. Johnny owed three hundred dollars; he would need days to pull together that much bread. He groped for a reefer, cupping it in his palm; no, man, he thought, with a rush of anger at the interference, Marlboro Man could drop by the house. He opened the hand and showed her the joint, rolled in red-white-and-blue paper. He was already high from the morning toke on the porch with Arlene. They’d been on the couch in the large room, and then Arlene had held her hand to him and led him to the rear porch. They’d hung on the porch together holding hands and sharing a joint; but Arlene had pulled away, a tease as always, sashaying from him down the steps into the overgrown yard. He’d abandoned the porch, reaching angrily for the door and slamming it shut, as Arlene commenced singing loudly in the yard among the trumpet vines. Then, as usual, he’d come to the Avenue.

  “Hey,” he said, barely slowing, “I just remembered there’s no one over the house now. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  She’d seen him fumbling in the pouch that dangled over faded cloth hanging loosely from lean shoulders. Holding the reefer in his palm, he led her along, heading up toward the eucalyptus groves. She was glad he would be smoking. She’d begun feeling uncomfortable, wondering how she would find something to say, but now she understood how unnecessary that would be. He merely dropped a bland remark, much as her father would, whenever a pause be
came overly long.

  As the boy rambled on next to her, she found herself losing the thread of the story that played in her head. One thing for sure, though: there was no Tom or Charles. She was beginning to enjoy strolling along. And Johnny seemed familiar in other ways, though she could not say what that meant.

  They headed up an angling road of old houses and shaded yards. Leading away from a curve through the opening in a stone wall, a path wound along the shoulder of a canyon and soon faded among dry grasses and eucalyptus groves. The afternoon had turned warm; the sun engulfed her back and shoulders as they followed the path through wavering grasses. Though all words had ceased, she could hear the cawing of crows as they advanced deeper into the canyon, Johnny in the lead. She followed, fending off reeds that caught at her elbows. Soon they reached a lush, shady place greened by a nearby spring. There they found level ground, as though for a picnic.

  Johnny opened the palm holding the reefer. He dampened one end and then the other in his mouth, then hung it there as he reached for some matches and tore one away, scraping sharply in a curving arc and pausing, beholding the flare. Holding the flame to the dampened paper, he inhaled as the paper browned, sending up another flare; then he began to smoke. She could smell the plume, rising sweet and pungent. Johnny smoked for a while and then reached it toward her.

  Johnny was expecting her to smoke, and so she took a drag, reddening the coal, and handed off. He went on smoking; and then, when the roach was nearly down, he pinched it hard with thumb and forefinger and stowed it in the leather pouch.

  She was enjoying being in the shade overlooking the bay. They’d come a long way up the slope—she’d rarely come so far, except in her parents’ car. There could never be hours enough in such a place: groves and grasses, sun and gray-blue bay. The lazy eucalyptus fronds rippling overhead shed an odor of dry vinegar. Soon she was in a personal space, hardly aware of the boy, whom she could well have abandoned along the path, for now there was only herself and the place. She turned away from the boy and was moving among wavering eucalyptus leaves, green and purple and blue . . .