Fields of Exile. Nora Gold
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donuts to a small, square table.
For several minutes there’s silence: they just slurp, munch, and swallow. But soon they’re sharing how anxious they were about coming back to school after years spent out in the field, and how relieved they are to have at least one easy course, though they hope their other classes aren’t quite as vacuous as Weick’s. It turns out Pam and Aliza, like Judith, are feminists, and while Cindy listens, they talk about the deadly style of the traditional male lecturer — Weick being the perfect example — and then about men in general. Including their own men, past and present — except for Pam, who gets completely silent for once, making Judith wonder if she’s a lesbian. Then Aliza starts telling funny anecdotes. She’s almost like a comedienne, and for a while they just sit around and laugh as she entertains them. Judith flashbacks to how her father loved to just sit around and “chew the fat,” as he’d call it, listening to people tell funny or fascinating stories and throwing in some of his own. Without warning it’s back: that grief that’s always waiting, crouching and ready to pounce, like a cat hidden in the pit of her stomach. She sits, stunned and staring, for several minutes. Then it passes, and she’s back again. Aliza is now in the middle of telling a dirty joke — Judith missed the beginning, so doesn’t fully get it when Aliza delivers the punchline — but it has something to do with a leaning tower of penis. Pam has a high-pitched screech of a laugh, like a monkey’s, and this, with all the glee and giddiness from the others, makes Judith start laughing, too. Then Cindy says, “Look at the time! It’s five to eleven,” and they hurry back for their second class.
From eleven o’clock to one, it’s “Introduction to Social Justice” with Greg Smolan. Greg is short for Gregory — he’s named after the saint, he tells them with a grin — not that he believes in any of that stuff anymore. If he believes in any religion now, it’s the religion of social justice. This class is fun: a cross between a gossip column about the Canadian elite — the rich-and-famous (or the rich-and-infamous) — and a detective thriller built around a conspiracy. Greg, although he doesn’t use this exact word, sees everything as a conspiracy. For two hours he describes how the white, Christian, male elite of Canada uses its power, influence, and wealth to shape virtually all of Canada’s social and economic policies, which in turn help to maintain, and even extend, this same power, influence, and wealth. “Of course,” he explains, “these policies also maintain and extend the marginalization and oppression of those who are poor, old, female, ethnically diverse, GLBT, and/or disabled, physically, intellectually, or psychiatrically. This is just how things work.”
Sitting in Greg’s class on a wooden chair as hard as a pew, Judith listens to his succession of stories about the connections between government, business, inherited wealth, social celebrity, and the media. He describes as vividly as a scene from the movie Howard’s End how, even in Canada now in 2002 — no different, in fact, from the British upper classes in Victorian times — the rich and powerful intermingle familially, socially, professionally, and financially. At their golf games and formal dinners, fundraising galas, garden parties, and weddings, they interact and intermarry, thus keeping within their little circle all that wealth and power. It’s been ten years now since Judith left Canada and became active on the Israeli left, and in all this time she hasn’t had direct contact with any Canadian leftists. So it’s fascinating for her to now hear what their issues are. The left in Canada and Israel have certain obvious similarities, but here the concerns of the left have nothing to do with war and peace, national survival, security, or land. Their issues all seem relatively theoretical to her, and removed from everyday life. She glances at Cindy to see how she’s reacting to this class, but Cindy’s face is bent low over the page she’s scribbling notes on, and Judith can’t make out her expression.
Greg is getting more passionate by the minute, waving his hands around in the air as he speaks, and his voice is rising in volume, and soon he’s so carried away he completely loses track of the time and continues straight through until one o’clock with his charming amalgam of Marx, Freire, and Foucault. Judith hasn’t studied in depth even one of this trinity of guys (of course they’re all guys), but they don’t seem to fit very well together. She can’t picture them being in the same room and having anything in common. But Greg keeps saying he’s “eclectic,” and in his eclectic electric blender, Marx, Freire, and Foucault mush into a kind of sweet social justice strawberry milkshake that has its own internal logic. Greg’s political views seem to Judith not very different from her own, so she doesn’t feel he’s convincing her of anything new. But listening to him speak in his flowing, persuasive, almost poetic way, she wishes Bobby could hear him. She’s sure Greg could make even Bobby, defender of all things capitalist and corporate, see things differently.
As soon as this class ends, Judith asks Cindy to hold a seat for her in the next one and races to the bathroom. There she pees with immense relief, and then for another minute sits on the toilet, daydreaming. Bobby may see her as a left-wing freak-o, but to the people here she makes sense, and they make sense to her, too. This might turn out to be a good year, after all. It could be interesting, even fun, to spend some time here in Canada. In exile, but just for a while. It sounds like the title of a song, “Exile but Just for a While,” and she starts humming a tune to go along with it. For the first time since promising her father she’d return to school, she doesn’t feel trapped or resentful about it. Maybe her father knew something she didn’t. Maybe he was smarter than she thought.
From 1:30 to 3:30 she has the last of her three courses: “Social Work with Individuals, Families, and Groups,” with Suzy Malone. (Or “’mAlone,” as she now thinks of that name.) Arriving from the bathroom, Judith gets stuck behind a dozen students filing slowly into the classroom, most holding sandwiches and drinks. When there’s no longer anyone ahead of her blocking her view, and for the first time she can see the teacher standing at the front of the room, she does a double-take. She knows her. They’ve met before. But where? It takes several seconds to remember, and then it all comes back. It was at a country club in May, at a boring retirement party for a founder of the law firm where Bobby had just begun. Suzy’s husband worked there, too, but as a senior partner. She and Suzy met in the bathroom — a gorgeous, spacious bathroom full of elegant peach-coloured gladioli — and after they somehow discovered they were both social workers, they chatted for about ten minutes. There was something very intimate about standing together in that bathroom while other women came and went, and the toilets kept flushing over and over. Suzy was very interested in the work Judith had done in Israel at a kindergarten for developmentally challenged children, and she told her about the problems of her eleven-year-old daughter, Natalie, who had autism, and how this was affecting her other two kids. Judith, coincidentally, had just heard from a friend of her father’s about a new summer camp for “special needs” kids, and she passed this information along to Suzy. They had a long, lovely conversation — the kind you have when you never expect to see that person again — and she hasn’t thought about Suzy since.
Now Suzy is smiling brightly at her. As Judith approaches, she is struck by how pretty and petite Suzy is. A short, pretty woman in a fuchsia silk shirt.
“I didn’t know you were coming here to study!” Suzy says.
“Neither did I,” says Judith. “It was sort of last-minute.”
“Well, welcome to Dunhill. How are you finding it so far?”
“Okay.”
“You’ll be fine,” says Suzy. “There’s a lot to absorb at first. But you’re so smart —” Judith looks at her in surprise. “You are. You’ll be great. You’ll see.”
“Thanks.” Then Judith feels self-conscious. Glancing around, she sees some of the other students are listening to their conversation. Awkwardly, she says, “I should probably sit down.”
“Sure,” says Suzy. “We’ll be starting soon anyway.”
Judith sees Cindy waving at her from the middle of the room and goes to the chair Cindy has saved for her.
“How do you know her?” Cindy asks as Judith sits. “I thought you didn’t know anyone here.”
Judith starts to explain, but stops abruptly as Suzy says, “Good afternoon,” and begins