Nuclear Option. Dorothy Van Soest
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to sing along, but a lump in my throat blocked the words.
At the entrance to the building, people who were willing to risk arrest formed a circle and fell to their knees. The rest of us stood behind them like a choir surrounding a sacred altar. Father Keagan, pastor of the Monrow City Episcopal Church, taped a five-foot photograph of little children on the double glass doors and then knelt in prayer before it. As I stared at it, the faces of the children in the picture became the faces of the many children I had been unable to save. Markus, a student of mine in the Bronx who had disappeared in 1968 and had never been found. Jamie, a child stolen from the reservation and lost in the foster care system. The words from an old Sunday school song rang in my ears. Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.
Rhona, Char, and Anita, three biological sisters who were also Catholic Worker House nuns, stepped forward, each of them holding a vial of red liquid, their own blood, which they lifted up and presented like Communion wine.
Oh, o-o-oh, oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
The three sisters splashed their blood onto the images of the children. At that point I broke away from Norton, joined the inner circle, and fell to my knees.
Were you there when they nailed him to the cross? Yes, I was there. I had been hypnotized once for past-life regression and remembered a former life as a Roman soldier, on the wrong side. I didn’t know if that was true or not, of course, only that it felt like it was.
A dozen policemen in black jackets appeared, one of them with a megaphone. “You are on private property. If you do not leave immediately, you will be arrested.” Soon three officers stepped into the circle, and they started to confront each resister one by one.
“Ma’am,” one of them said when it was my turn, “do you know that you are on private property?”
I looked at him. Unable to answer.
“Ma’am, you have one more chance to leave or you will be arrested.”
When I didn’t move, one officer grabbed my arms, another one my legs. My body went limp. I closed my eyes and saw the blood-splattered photo of the children as the officers bound my hands behind my back with plastic cuffs and then lifted me from the ground, carried me away, and tossed me onto a bench in a police van. Just before the door closed, Norton was thrown onto the bench across from me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I promised we’d spend the day together.”
He winked. “We are together.”
At the station, we were separated though, men and women held in different cells. At dusk a judge released us on our own recognizance pending trial, and Norton and I went to our bar. This time we sat side by side in our booth, hip against hip, shoulder touching shoulder, hands brushing hands. When the waitress appeared with my usual glass of wine and his usual can of beer, we both shook our heads.
“Gin and tonic,” we said in unison. We hadn’t even consulted each other first.
Norton laughed. “I do believe we have become one person.”
He reached for my hand and squeezed it. I knew I should pull away but I didn’t. He took both of my hands in his and looked at me for a long time, his eyes reflecting the same longing that was in mine. Then he kissed the tips of my fingers and tenderly caressed them one by one. I knew it was wrong. He was married. He had a son. I pulled my hands away and reached for my drink.
After several minutes of silence and another gin and tonic, Norton ran his fingers down my cheek. “It’s too late, Sylvia. I already love you. You already love me.”
I did love him. I loved everything about him. I loved his serious pontificating. The way he injected his monologues with doses of ironic self-mockery. I even loved his stubbornness. Once he decided what was right, there was no getting him to change his mind. He was like me that way. Maybe loving Norton was my way of loving myself. Maybe it was a way of caring for myself, a way to ward off my fears or at least manage them. Could that be so wrong? And in the face of nuclear annihilation, how important was right and wrong anyway? How could it be wrong to follow my heart?
My hand touched Norton’s cheek. “Do you think we have time?”
He nodded, his eyes full.
“Okay, then,” I said, my words slurring. “Let’s go to my place.”
THREE
2019
Crowds of people squeeze past us on their way to the exit while I gaze into Corey Cramer’s green eyes, the eyes of Norton, the man I adored, the love of my life, whose leaving, I now realize, I’ve never fully mourned. The face of his son is like a kaleidoscopic lens of shards from the past. Norton and me climbing a fence at a military base. Forming a human blockade, sitting arm in arm, singing Give Peace a Chance. Holding hands. Lying side by side in bed, sharing secrets. Laughing. Together. Always together. Until we weren’t.
Corey’s jaw is set tight. “You knew my father?”
I brush an imaginary piece of lint from my skirt. “We were good friends.”
His eyes see into me. My first impulse is to hide my nakedness; my second is to embrace it, scars and all. He shuffles from one foot to the other. He’s going to walk away.
“Your father and I were in the nuclear disarmament movement together in the eighties.”
He looks down at the floor. “I was only four years old when . . . I don’t remember much, about my dad.”
“He talked about you a lot,” I say.
His mouth shapes into a pout. He looks just like the child in the picture Norton always carried in his wallet.
“Coffee?” I say.
He doesn’t say yes or no, but when I turn and walk out the door, he follows. My left hand grips my long skirt so I won’t trip going down the steps. We skirt the edges of the angry protesters, and he cups my right elbow. Just like Norton used to.
“There’s an all-night diner around the corner,” he says when we reach the bottom step.
I nod. “Nick’s. Your father and I . . .” A deep ache in my throat swallows up my words, a longing to go to the diner with Norton just one more time, to feel the warmth of his hand in mine, his arm around my shoulders. For years after he was gone, I drowned my grief in alcohol. Later, after I got into recovery, I tucked our relationship into a compartment of drinking transgressions, labeled it an illicit affair with a married man who shared my passion for justice, sex, and alcohol.
When we reach the diner, I pour my ache for Norton back into its secret container in my heart. Jingling bells on the door announce our arrival; blinding lights reflecting off the steel panels behind the well-worn counter welcome us. We pass the floor-mounted counter stools, walk to the far end of the railroad-like dining car, and sit in the last booth—Norton’s and my booth. Corey, unaware of the unfinished grief his presence has unleashed, flips through the list of songs on the tabletop jukebox. He reaches in his pocket for a quarter (it used to be a nickel) and selects King of the Road, one of Norton’s favorites, then bobs his head up and down in time with the music just like Norton did. Unlike his father, who loved the diner’s tacky décor, Corey’s face registers distaste for the mismatched red stripes down the middle of the white Formica table, the white stripes on the red wall.
“You look just like your father,” I say.
“Hmm.” He picks up his menu, pretends to read it.
“He was a fighter,” I say.
He looks at me for a long time, then down, his palms pressed into the table. He’s not the talker Norton was. Finally, he leans back in the booth with a sigh.
“Mom said the FBI is what got him,” he says at last. “But she always changed the subject when I asked what happened. That’s what Mom was best at. Changing the subject.”
“Your dad did what he did for your