Movement (6 page)

“On the other hand,” he watched her closely, “you have to take certain risks, like we did a couple of years ago with the coverage of Prague.”

She released the beads and picked up her fountain pen.

Harry continued, “I supposed that's what journalistic courage is all about. To hell with it. Tell Tony to go ahead. I'll trust my instincts. By the way, thanks a lot for finishing up the layouts. You're my right hand. Don't know what I would do without you.”

Susan packed the solicitor's letters and her notes on South African sports in the frayed blue folder marked “Mockup.” She listened to a muffled slam from the small front room. The office was gulping another person. It had felt stuffy lately, cramped. She never believed those gas fires were healthy.

Hilary rang the next day, at the worst possible time. Into that damn consciousness raising trip. But she was so funny when she got sarcastic about Harry. Susan really wanted to laugh. Instead, she defended Harry, “Nonsense, Hilary. He's totally committed to the struggle. This paper is his life.”

“Then he better start making funeral arrangements,” said Hilary. “If
The Artisan
survives, it's your doing. You're responsible for organizing the mockup, for convincing the contributors to stick around, for getting Colson to reconsider publishing. Everyone knows it.”

“Enough high drama,” said Susan. “Sometimes I wonder how much you defend me just because I'm a woman. Anyway,
enough
, because I've got to get back to work.”

“All right, kid. If things don't work out on TA, though, you know you've always got a job in Montreal. Take care of yourself. Cheers.”

Susan hung up and turned to the secretary, “Alice, could you hold all the calls for twenty minutes?”

She spoke through the pots of drugged ferns. She hated that gas fire. If it did this to plants, what did it do to people? She stared past Alice, through the dingy window panes. The brick wall across the alley looked like the pointilism she had studied at the Art Gallery last term, the image was diffused, then discernible. She had been meaning to clean that window for months.

The flaccid blond woman nodded politely from inside her
National Enquirer,
looked up and smiled obligingly, “OK, Mrs.… I mean, Susan. I'll tell them you're in a meeting.”

It had taken Alice six weeks to call her Susan. But who was she to talk? It had taken
her
four
months
to call Harry, Harry. (The same thing happened with her mother-in-law. It would have been so much easier if she had said, “Call me ‘Mom,' or ‘Mrs. Thompson,' or ‘Ruth.'”) And he was characteristically indifferent the day she finally got up the nerve to say, “Harry, I think.…”

“We should work on the logo and the pages,” she said as she entered his office, “if we're going to get them in by Friday, don't you think?”

“Yes, yes. And the solicitor's coming. Can you tie those things up for me. I've got some work to do on the censorship piece. Perhaps you could come in after lunch?”

“Sure, Harry.”

She got a good start and didn't want to break for lunch. When people asked Susan why she worked so hard she explained that in a dotty way, she believed in
The Artisan
, “Canada's radical literary forum.” Their coverage of Indochina was closely read. She was proudest of the space they gave to trade union politics, to non-intellectuals, breaking down media exclusivity. She felt like she was helping to change things, not directly, but by being a resource for people who could.

Harry didn't buzz her that afternoon. Just as well because she had to work into the evening editing. Harry hated multiple reviews, but she was glad she had suggested juxtaposing the books on Canadian and Irish nationalism. Anyway, he would like the critiques of
The Female Eunuch.
The writer showed how women's liberation was a bourgeois deviation from class struggle. If they continued all this nitpicking about who ran meetings, nothing would get done. Hilary would scream “Leftist chauvinism,” but Susan agreed with the article. What was wrong with complimenting a man's work at home or in the office, if it were all part of the same struggle? What was wrong with typing, for instance? It had been her entree to university politics where she met Guy and into TA, itself.

The telephone resonated in the empty room. She hesitated. She didn't want to get home late again.

“Señor Harry Simpson, por favor.”

“I'm sorry,” she scrambled for her California Spanish, “Señor Simpson no está aqui.”

“OK, Susan,” a Canadian voice broke in. “I'm glad I caught you.”

The operator faded in a garble of Spanish. “This is Tony Sanchez. I've got a great lead. Marquez is briefing a few journalists in the hills above Zaragoza. I need more money and time if I'm going to cover it.”

“I'll get Harry on the phone tonight and we'll see.”

“No, no time for that. The MULA are taking a small group of us today. They're leaving in an hour. I need to know right away whether I can have $200 in expenses and four more days on the deadline. If I don't go with them now, I'll never get into camp.”

“Give me forty-five minutes to reach Harry.”

“Thirty-five.”

“Right, call me back in thirty-five minutes on the 06 line.”

She didn't think Harry could refuse an exclusive interview with Marquez. The number was busy. But then, Harry was so reticent about the Trots. Susan dialed his number again. Busy. And again. She would never make it to Harry's house in Rosedale and back in that time. However, Guy could. Her only option was to ring Guy.

“Susan, hon, where the hell are you?”

“I'm afraid I'm still at work. Something's come up. An emergency call from Spain. Tony has a chance to go to Marquez' camp, but we have to reach him with the OK in a halfhour. I'll explain later. Could you do me a huge favor? I can't get Harry on the phone. Could you drive over there and tell him to call me here?”

“Well, I don't know. I have my doubts about Marquez' position. The caucus was discussing just this afternoon that his kind of nationalism is …”

“Oh, come on Guy. We can't ignore a movement as big as that.”

“Fucking hell, it's not as if I don't have enough to do tonight, preparing the caucus platform, finding time to work on my thesis.”

“Guy, look, I'm sorry to impose. But this could mean the survival of TA.”

“What about the survival of something euphemistically known as ‘our marriage'?”

She told him she also believed in healthy confrontations, that they should both get into their feelings about the marriage, but couldn't it wait an hour until she got home?

When she hung up, the only remorse she felt was from her Yoga teacher's lecture on back tension. How had she taken Guy's abuse for so long? His rambling accusations as he peered into the aquarium feeding his black bullheads and veiltails. The phone rang and she answered it with relief.

“Susan? Harry here. What's all this about a Spanish Revolution?”

She repeated the story.

“I'll have to think about it.”

“But there's no time to think about it. Tony's calling back in twenty minutes.”

“Why did you arrange a fool thing like that? This is a big decision. We risk a huge hole. On the other hand, a good piece could swing Colson's judgment.”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “But we've got to make a decision.”

“Don't pressure me,” he said. “I'll call you back.”

“OK, Harry, but please remember to call within fifteen minutes.”

Had she been too hyper? Guy always said she got hyper in emergencies. Better to get hyper than paralyzed like Harry. Three minutes to nine. TA's survival could hinge on one good story. She tried to ring Harry. The number was busy. All right, she thought, he must be calling back. She waited, weighted by silence. Finally the phone rang. It was the 06 line. It was Tony.

“Go ahead with it, Tony. Where do you want the money wired?”

She gave him three extra days for the deadline. Elated, she was also surprised at her confidence and her indifference to Harry. He could call her at home if he wanted to find out what had happened. She put on her raincoat and gathered several manuscripts into her briefcase.

Susan walked briskly to the bus stop. Usually she let herself be sucked home on the subway. She hated how people in the underground corridors rushed unconsciously past each other, like numbers in the formulas of some ironic computer programmer. The subway was part of her mindless survival in Toronto. (By the time she jostled a seat, arranged the groceries and briefcase on her lap, she was too exhausted to exhale the parentheses with which she had ordered her day.) Tonight she saw a bus as soon as she turned the corner. She clinked 15 cents into the news vendor's tin, picked up a
Toronto Star
and hailed the wheezing, swaggering wagon.

Guy wasn't home. He probably stopped off at the Brunswick after Harry's. She just wanted to forget the whole mess. She tidied up the living room and went into the kitchen to make Guy's sandwiches. She always made them at night because he hated the smell of mustard in the morning. She left him a note before crawling under the covers. The shadow of his body became noticeable in the first light. She hadn't heard him come back. She must have slept well. She left the room silently at 8:00 a.m.

“Mr. Simpson had to leave for Winnipeg unexpectedly,” Alice said quickly. “He told me that I was to refer any calls to you. He said you would understand about the Manitoba piece, interviewing Dr. Wolfe and all. He said he would call you.”

Susan didn't understand and Harry didn't call. Her worries about the Spanish piece disappeared under the havoc of a dozen other decisions about type face and photographs and cartoons. She didn't have time to panic. Occasionally she would notice herself making decisions and then review her work peripherally.

The review of the Greer book still bothered her. Somehow it wasn't conclusive enough. She called Hilary for some information, knowing full well that it was a terrible risk.

Hilary exploded. “Sure, sure there are a lot of problems with ‘feminist analysis,' but Greer doesn't represent the whole Women's Movement. Just like every bourgeois black prick doesn't represent African Liberation.”

“Oh, come on, Hilary, you can't possibly compare the oppression of women to the exploitation of the Third World. That's going pretty far.” Susan caught herself almost shouting down the line and said finally, “Look, I've got to get back to work.”

The next two days accelerated with the pressure of deadline against Harry's loose editing. She grew more and more annoyed with him until she realized that she was being unfair. Harry must be distracted, somehow. Normally, he was a fine editor, the most political person she knew. He had gone through so much with the Communist Party in the 50's. No wonder he was a bit threadbare.

When he sauntered in the office on Monday, Susan settled for a modest admonition, “Harry, you know I had to make a decision about the Spanish piece.”

“The Spanish … oh, yes. I tried to call you back, but I was interrupted. Then Ethel made some emergency call. Sorry about that. I reckoned you were perfectly sensible. What did you tell him?”

“To take three extra days on the story. And I wired $150 expenses.”

“Fine. Just fine,” he said as he walked into his office. He stuck his head back out the door, “Oh, I do have some questions about those columns in the front of the paper. And about the multiple review. I've told you before that this isn't an academic journal. I suppose it's too late now,” he sighed. “Could you stop by the office on the way back from the printer's tonight? I've got to talk over the publicity with you.”

“Gosh, I'm sorry Harry, but I promised Guy a real supper tonight. It's our anniversary.” She tried to rationalize the sentimentality, but before she could come up with something that might satisfy Harry, he said, “Neither of us will be able to afford supper if this mockup isn't approved. Come on. I promise to give you a couple of days off at the end of this thing.”

Damn him. She wasn't some functionary scurrying after a Christmas bonus. What did he think she was doing while he was in Winnipeg? Hang on. She would sound like Hilary in a minute. The publicity did have to be done. Hang on, Susan. Watch out for the bourgeois individualism.

They met for two hours that evening. She briefed him on last week's decisions. He reassured her that she had done as well as he could have.

Guy was furious. He was having a hard enough time doing his research lately. When he borrowed a few hours to spend with her, she could at least show up. As far as he could see, she was ALWAYS having emergencies and he wondered, he just wondered without being too analytical about it, how many of them were escapes from their shitty relationship. Since she didn't seem to find the occasion so portentous, he was going back to study and would return when dinner was ready. He wished her Happy Anniversary, by the way.

Salad making always soothed her. When she was little, she imagined the best part of being married was going to be sitting in a blue-tiled kitchen reaching into the cornucopia for another cucumber. She liked to score the cucumbers on the edges with a fork so that when she cut them, they came out as unpredictably as paper dolls. (She and Guy were the best of their generation, the archetype virile revolutionaries who might be Mr. and Mrs. American in another era, she mused. Smart, confident, committed. He would finish his Ph.D. in psychology and they would take up his post in Havana. She would raise their kids in a healthy workers' state. But the order seemed to be breaking down. Susan wasn't sure she wanted to quit her job. Guy had let his thesis drag on for another year. He never
did
anything overt to annoy her—that's why she felt it was her fault—it was what he
didn't
do. She couldn't count on him for everything. In the end, he didn't even do his own work. Maybe she put too much pressure on him.) Tomatoes were satisfying when they were fresh and firm like these. She hated the overripe ones that sagged under the knife and squirted messily over the glistening chopping board. Raw mushrooms were the best, falling into thin, porous slices like wafers of fungus. Lettuce could be tedious when it was too wet. (She felt like a real bitch sometimes. She had to
pry
to learn what happened during his day. The conversation would be like an oral exam with halting, circumspect replies. Sometimes his withdrawal was an ambush. Like that weekend of the Third World Medical Conference. He insisted he wanted to go. Then on Thursday he announced that he still hadn't fixed the thermostats in the monkey room—on Thursday! Her work schedule was ruined for two weeks. It was only afterwards that she realized she might have gone alone.) Susan carefully dried the leaves until they looked like the heavy green tissue paper she used for collages when she was in Sister Matthew's art class. Fun, all this cutting and reassembling. That's what she liked best—putting it all in order. She detested random salads, crisp stews in smudged glass bowls. First she put in bits of lettuce then the celery, onion, mushrooms. She sprinkled rosemary and basil. On top she wheeled the tomatoes and cucumbers. (Guy would understand once they had a chance to sit down and discuss the chaos at work. To be fair, she hadn't told him very much yet. She always got home so late. After she cooked and cleaned up and they watched the news, there wasn't much time to talk.) The chops were sizzling and the potatoes were done just the way he liked them, with the jackets falling off.