A Time to Cast Away Stones
To my husband, Jay
© Copyright, 2012 by Elise Frances Miller
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
A Time to Cast Away Stones is a work of fiction. Its characters, scenes and locales are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity of fictional characters to people living or dead is purely coincidental. All American, French, and Czech names of educational institutions, streets and boulevards, public buildings and open spaces, neighborhoods, landmarks, tourist destinations, restaurants, cafés, night spots, etc. are identified by their actual names at the time. UC Berkeley professors’ names and class titles are identified from the university catalog. The text includes the real names of political, cultural and other public figures. Speeches and style of actual public figures are approximated, fictionalized and paraphrased.
Cover design by Margarita Camarena
Photo credits:
Cover: Michel MAIOFISS, Collection: Gamma-Rapho. Getty Images.
01 May 1968. PARIS, FRANCE. A couple crosses a cobblestone barricade on Saint Michel Boulevard during the Events of May.
Title page: Miller, Elise Frances, May 13, 1968 manifestation, personal photo collection.
Published 2012 by Sand Hill Review Press, San Mateo, California 94401.
Sand Hill Review Press Web Address: http://www.sandhillreviewpress.com
Contact: info@sandhillreviewpress.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012930971
Miller, Elise Frances.
A Time to Cast Away Stones/Elise Frances Miller
ISBN 978-1-937818-03-6 Trade Paperback (acid-free paper)
eISBN 9781937818104
1. 1968 political—Fiction. 2. 1968 social—Fiction. 3. College students—History—1968. 4. Berkeley (California)—Fiction. 5. Paris (France)—Fiction. 6. May Revolution—Fiction. 7. General strike, France, 1968. 8. Riots—France—Paris, 1968. 9. Vietnam War—Fiction. I. Title.
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Part One, California
Part Two, Paris, France
Part Three, Berkeley
Part Four, France
Part Five, Berkeley
Part Six, Paris
Part Seven, Berkeley
Part Eight, Paris
Part Nine, La Cité de la Lumière
About the author
Acknowledgements
Reader’s Guide
≈PART ONE≈
California
PROLOGUE
In 1991, my son put me on notice. He was fed up with hearing about the 60s generation. “Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, and now there’s as much racism, poverty and war as any time in history, and you pathetic suckers dealt it out!” Operation Desert Storm had commenced, and I shuddered to think that if this Middle East “operation” lasted as long as the Vietnam War, my fourteen-year-old might have to replay my guy’s crushing 60s decision—draft or dodge. The right corner of his lip turned up in disgust and his pimply face swung side to side like a gate in the breeze, about to slam shut on me. Did he imagine that we’d all signed a malicious pact aimed at screwing up the world?
In the decade that Americans of several generations are obsessed with, whether it’s to love it or hate it, we had a war and social strife, but most young Americans believed that our country was a good-hearted place that had, from its inception, haplessly spawned evil inequities. Just like prior and later generations, most of us were focused on finding a lover or a spouse and learning enough to make a living. So why did the myth persist that our entire generation was deliberately and confidently revolutionary?
When a TV movie called 1969 was released in the mid-90s, I gathered the family in front of the set to watch, hoping for some minimal support for my recollection about how naïve, frightened and passive I had been during my freshman year at UC Berkeley. Within minutes, I was on my feet, shouting “Everybody out! This is nonsense!” And then, of course, the family wouldn’t leave.
With entertainment objectives superseding the political ones, everyone in the film was a stereotype, speaking words designed to titillate. Girls were gorgeous and mindless, aggressive she-beasts craving “free love.” Guys – unless they were among the deluded soldiers and veterans – were either violent, grubby political radicals or violent, grubby drug addicts. Guys of all backgrounds were obsessed with not getting drafted—well, at least that part was true—but miraculously, they had acquired the ability to analyze every American blemish as if they’d earned PhDs in sociology. And courage! What bugged me most was the courage they all supposedly had: to change the way they looked, to expose themselves to loss of family and friendships, to attack and be assaulted physically, to risk everything for their ideals.
But I remembered. For most of us, it was not that way. Not for teenagers and college students in their early 20s. Out of over 7 million U.S. college students, estimates hover at only 40,000 demonstrating against the war. Then in January 1968, the Vietnamese Tet Offensive brought international awareness to the immoral and tragic mess stirred up by our leaders in Washington. Suddenly, at each demonstration, 10,000 to 100,000 people hit the streets, not just in America, but all over the world. The numbers grew from there and reached into mainstream society, but that was in the 1970s, when social revolutions for women, gays and other minorities were launched as well. Determined to find physical proof of the truth, I began pulling out old pictures and yearbooks from our Los Angeles high schools and UC Berkeley. Suddenly, there we were, thousands of trim-haired, neatly-dressed, conservative-looking youngsters, with perky, forced smiles, encased in identical inch by inch-and-a-quarter boxes for our children to snicker at. Only they did not snicker.
“Mom, this isn’t the 60s, is it?” our daughter spoke first. “I mean, these kids are all so conservative. Look at the short hair on the guys, and the girl’s hair. What are those little wings growing out from their cheeks?”
I laughed. “That was the ‘flip,’” I said. “That was the style.”
“They’re all so…so middle America!”
“Look at you!” our son recognized my picture. My hair hung past my shoulders, wings nevertheless quite pronounced. I remembered pinning in the rollers at bedtime each night. Eyeliner and lipstick were carefully applied, designed to construct a face like Natalie Wood’s—on the make, yet still an innocent young girl.
“What happened to hippies and commies and anger?” our son asked. “You all look like a bunch of nerds. You don’t look like you could fight your way out of a paper bag, let alone defy cops to save the world.”
I came to put my arms around them both and drew them in with a tug. “This is real,” I told them. “Remember it the next time you see those more exciting versions in the movies.” But our son moved away from the yearbook, shrugged his shoulders and grew silent. Our daughter was still flipping through the book, disappointment furrowing her brow.
That was the night I decided to create a work of fiction to convey my recollections about how we looked, felt, struggled and persevered. How every day those conformists photographed in the Berkeley yearbook confronted awkward questions, beckoning quests, and critical decisions. And how all over the world in the spring of 1968, there was unavoidable turmoil as abrasive as stone and change as unstoppable as time itself.
ONE
Berkeley
The first time I saw UC Berkeley, I held fast to Aaron Becker’s arm with both hands as we strolled beneath Sather Gate and over to the side of Strawberry Creek bridge. Above us, the Berkeley hills shimmered in green and gold, the buildings rose white and majestic, and the promise soared as large as the picture on a giant movie screen—football games and fraternity parties and sunlit arms heavy with textbooks. Wasn’t I the lucky one to be on campus, a senior in high school visiting my college boyfriend for the weekend? Then, as I leaned against Strawberry Creek’s retaining wall, a crisp paper flyer crackled against my hip. I glanced down at a boldface word—“protest”—and gave out with a startled “ohh.” But before I could back away for a better view, Aaron wrapped his arms around me. He stroked my hair and placed a strand neatly behind my ear. His warm breath on my cheek steadied my own. “Never mind about all that,” he whispered. “You’ll hear about it soon enough. I’m so happy you’re up here with me, Janet. Just let me hold you…” My heart pounded wildly at the mere thought that by next fall, I would join Aaron for his final year at the university. We kissed passionately, then once again more tenderly, as if to seal a bargain we had made about our future.
That sunny spring weekend in 1967, Aaron was my academic advisor, tour guide, and basketball buddy. I stayed in the dorm with the daughter of Mother’s friend. In the evening hours before dorm lockout, Aaron and I snuggled up on the broken-down sofa in his studio apartment, sipping Lancer’s rosé from juice glasses and listening to his hi-fi set. Simon and Garfunkel’s Homeward Bound awoke a feeling in both of us that here, together, would be our true home.
Aaron had been in the scout troop with my brother Matt from Cubs to Eagles. The gangly boy had grown tall, with a Paul Newman-tapered body, light brown hair and deep, dark brown eyes. For over six months, since we rediscovered each other on one of his vacation visits back to Beverly Hills High, Aaron had enchanted me with his stories about the magic of “Cal.” His campaign of long-distance phone calls and color postcards of bay views at sunset succeeded in their purpose, and I set my sights on Berkeley.
So, in the fall of 1967, I came north for my freshman year, cherishing a vague, Victorian version of romantic fulfillment. Like nineteenth century Daguerreotype portraits. Wedding cake couples, slightly blurry around the edges with touched-up blushing cheeks. From my dorm room on the sixth floor of Freeborn Hall, the San Francisco Bay spread out in front of me just as in those dozen or so “propaganda” postcards from Aaron that I’d saved in the bottom of my desk drawer. But my boyfriend couldn’t be with me all the time to romance me away from the grating reality all around us. His vivid descriptions of life at the “greatest public university in the nation” began to look like a Norman Rockwell with a shredded canvas, or worse, like one of those poor mangled people painted by Soutine or Munch.
On my first night as a college freshman, hours after the rosy sunset had turned to sludge over the Bay, my new roommate asked, “Do you support Johnson’s war?” Her voice was tight, as if something was bunched inside her throat. Her name was Barbara Borovsky, and she was from San Francisco. We had been telling each other about our high schools and families. Across the darkened room, talking between beds, it should have been easy to express the ambivalence that was in my heart.
“Well…no…but I don’t think I know enough to tell them how to win it,” I replied.
“Then you believe it has to be won,” Barbara spat out. She was way too disgusted to be relaxing into a good night’s sleep. “How do you feel about the American military just making a quick exit, getting the hell out right now?”
“Well”—I always used words like ‘well,’ ‘perhaps,’ ‘I think,’ and ‘maybe.’ I had read in Cosmopolitan Magazine that those words signaled that you lacked self-confidence. So natch, I tried not to say them, but they continued to pop out. I stopped talking for a moment, and then I told her, “I just got to college. What do I know?”
Barbara was silent for what seemed like a long time, except for quick, deep nose breathing, like a girl running laps for gym class. Then, with a hard edge to her voice, she said, “If you don’t mind, Janet, let’s not talk politics in this room. No war. No politics. And no religion either.”
“But, you seem to be interested, and I’m not…not…”
“We have to co-exist here,” she said matter-of-factly. “And I, for one, have a very busy year planned.”
So that was my potluck roommate. Barbara Borovsky was short and stocky, with frizzy orange hair, and I soon noticed, she dressed in pants every single day. In a way, she was what I had always wanted to be: sure of herself. From the moment she stepped off the bus from her home in the big city across the San Francisco Bay, she knew what she wanted to accomplish at Cal. She was there to learn about societies and politics and to master effective writing and speaking skills. Her parents were against the war, and she fell naturally into a pattern of extracurricular activity that gave her a cadre of friends with a common purpose.
After that first night, Barbara was never mean, she just ignored me. I tried to accept the fact that I would never be my roommate’s friend. She would hear the words “snooty and superficial” in my high-pitched, little-girl voice, and see it written in my appearance—cashmere sweaters, long, wavy black hair, and green eyes that I emphasized with black eyeliner, just as I had done in high school. After all, I did think I made a more attractive impression that way.
But it bugged me. The distance between us was more than superficial. Underneath layers of hair spray and scalp, my gray matter felt like it was all wrapped up in one of those Ace bandages that protect sore muscles from movement. Barbara’s brain would contract, breathe, bleed and crackle, and it might just as well configure itself into a big electric neon sign that screamed, “Here I am!” Basically, I was scared to death of her. I went around ashamed of despising Barbara. I comforted myself with the assumption that she despised me back.
The second week of the quarter, I finally got up the nerve to talk to Aaron about Barbara Borovsky.
We were having coffee in the Bear’s Lair. Its woodsy ambiance seemed like a good backdrop for sharing. After sipping in silence for a few seconds, I set my cup down as if the heavy mug were made of rare porcelain. “I’ve got a problem.” I hesitated.
“I’ve got a solution,” he quipped. “Well, maybe. Try me.” He blew into his steaming cup.
“I’ve been assigned a radical for a roommate.”
Aaron’s head jerked up from his coffee. We sat next to each other in the booth, so he turned awkwardly toward me. Concern creased the space between his eyes. “Go on.
“A few quick words in the morning and a quick ‘g’night Janet’ isn’t normal for roommates, is it?” I continued. “And when I walk into the dorm lobby I see Barbara through the double doors surrounded by her hordes of friends in the study lounge. I can see that messy orange halo of frizzy hair hunched over some newspaper story or SDS leaflet like a lamp illuminating a sacred treatise. I want to stop and say hello. I want to be friends, but there they all are,” I whined. “And I’m as shy and spineless as a…a…a nematode.”
Aaron laughed. “Zoology 10 is really increasing your vocabulary, isn’t it?”
“Don’t laugh at me. Please? I had hopes that my roommate would be my best friend. Like a sister. I’ve never had a sister…” My voice faded as I fought against tears. Dammit, why did I always sound so junior high?
Up until now, Aaron hadn’t even liked to discuss the protests against the war. Up until now, occasionally or rarely would have suited me fine. Aaron had worthy ambitions in scientific research and he didn’t want an arrest record or any shoddy FBI file messing up his diligently planned future. I couldn’t blame him for that, not if it wasn’t going to help end the war anyway. And that’s what he believed. And I? I believed in Aaron. I waited for his “solution” to come.
Aaron cleared his throat and exaggerated a straight face. “Here’s the real problem,” he said. “Every single girl in Freeborn Hall was in the popular crowd in high school. And as amazing as it sounds, they were all radicals. Popular radicals. That was one of the toughest prerequisites for admission, like passing Algebra 2. You lucked out, Janet. They waived the requirement for you. And you got the only official waiver, so just remember that.”
Sarcasm was Aaron’s way. His joke snapped me back to reality. Cracked me up. I punched him on the arm in a fit of faux resentment. Heavens! Had I actually been feeling like they were all high school “popular crowd radicals”?
Opening up to Aaron, I was never shy. I gazed at my boyfriend’s square jaw and his straight sandy brown hair, cut at a moderate, in-between length. He wore Levis and a clean, button-down cotton shirt, blending right in with most of the guys at Cal. At least, I reflected, those not trying to prove a point.
I sipped my coffee. Aaron was still grinning at me. True, it was a cockeyed, sarcastic smile, but it took me in like I was part of his joke on the world. I went on, “Je comprends, je comprends! I should forget about Barbara and look around for girls not interested in politics.”
“Sure,” he encouraged. “There are plenty of them. More of them, in fact.”
“But the thing is, I am interested in politics.” Aaron’s brows lifted about a mile, but I pushed bravely on. “And I admire Barbara’s activities, kind of. And I think I agree with her views, maybe. But it’s frustrating not being able to discuss things with her. She cuts me off. She’s so all-or-nothing.”
Aaron nodded attentively. “Absolutist. That’s how they are.”
“Yes. Well, that’s how she is. And she’s out there on the Plaza so much that I don’t know how she’s ever going to pass her exams. Barbara Borovsky. Remember that name because she’s going to be famous some day.”
Aaron chuckled. “That’s quite a mouthful.”
“Yes, well…”
“Famous and in jail, eh? Well, it has to be a public performance. That’s the radical’s strategy.”
I shuddered at the word ‘performance.’ “In a way,” I said, “I envy Barbara. I’d like to be like that, to work on something significant, to have more faith in myself and to have lots of friends. But do you think she could be a card-carrying Communist?”
He choked a bit on his swallow of coffee. “President Johnson,”—his lip curled cynically at his own mention of our president—“wants the public to believe that the majority of students are radicals. And that all students who are war protesters are Communists. Or drug addicts, nymphomaniacs, or bomb-toting criminal anarchists. And lazy and work-averse…”
“…like Maynard G. Krebs. With dirty hair, of course.” I said with a giggle.
“You’ve got it,” he said. “His strategy is to lump us all together.”
“But we’re not all like that. And no one is all those things, are they?”
“Of course not,” he soothed. “So about your roommate, you might want to avoid knee-jerk reactions. She might hate the war, but not be a member of the Communist Party.”
“Of course you’re right!”
“You can just ask her, can’t you?”
“Are you kidding? She might have squeaky clean hair and hate the Communists as much as Daddy, but still, she can be sharp as a Bowie knife.”
Aaron nodded, then polished off his coffee. The brown liquid in my cup was cold and unappealing. I slid the cup around in its saucer, not knowing what else to say. It sloshed on my finger, and I swiped at it with my napkin.
“I’m sorry your roommate has been so tough on you,” Aaron said earnestly. “Maybe if you tell her that you’re better at listening than talking when it comes to politics? I mean, if you really want to understand her…
“I do, but…” I sighed, then slumped in my seat.
Aaron put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed. “Probably best not to get involved,” he advised. “Some of those people break laws. But honestly, you don’t have to be afraid in your dorm. Remember, your roommate has her nightmares, too. Nightmares are the common denominator these days.”
So that’s where we were, Aaron and I, caught in the vise between radical youth performance and Johnson administration propaganda, and wanting more than anything else to be left alone to live a normal life. I hadn’t understood him one bit about the nightmares then, but I hadn’t wanted to admit it.
About five weeks into the quarter when a simple, one-page letter from Mother arrived, I finally understood the comment about the nightmares. The letter informed me—in Mother’s neat, tiny script—that Matthew, my only brother, my childhood companion, would be shipping out to Vietnam.
The first reading was downstairs in the dorm when it was already time to set out on my daily walk to class. Forcing myself to place one foot in front of the other, I tried to find the strength to stop being numb. The traffic light on the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph Avenues turned green and I was swept forward by the crowd. I reached into my pocket and scrunched the paper. How dare Mother and Daddy write this in a letter! Would the expense of a telephone call bankrupt them? I knew the answer: my need to hear a voice, to cry into a receiver, was exactly the scene they wanted to avoid. At least, I thought, I’ll be able to cry on the one shoulder I can count on in this world. My date that night with Aaron would be my solace.
On the other side of the intersection where the crowd spread out, I peered across Sproul Plaza to Sather Gate. Fighting my way back to high school senior year, I remembered the two of us walking through the Gate and Aaron talking in that habitual, show-off way of his with his arm wrapped protectively around my back. The memory of a sweet kiss on Strawberry Creek bridge brought tears to my eyes.
Crumpling onto one of the slatted benches by the side of Sproul, I began to sob, both grateful and dismayed that no one in this bunch of strangers paid any attention. I took deep breaths and blew my nose, realizing that life as I knew it was gone. If I tried to revive it now, it would feel like a Frankenstein, a creature pieced together from dead flesh. One had only to read the Daily Cal or to be in the Plaza at noon to perceive the nightmare that I had until today—with no little help from Aaron’s exalted perspective—scrupulously avoided.
As I caught my breath and wiped my eyes, I was furious with myself that I knew so little about what would soon be Matt Magill’s war. Instinctively, I frowned at the books in my lap. What good were these thick textbooks if they didn’t teach me anything real about my life? I would go today—right after class!—to read up on Vietnam. There must be whole books and magazines on the subject in the Main Library.
With a burst of determination, I prepared to rise. Further up the Plaza, I spotted Barbara Borovsky sitting behind the Students for a Democratic Society table, as usual. She had explained why SDS was an appropriate name for the organization. It was one of the few real conversations we’d had that month.
But on the morning that I learned my big brother had been drafted, I suddenly began to notice more than the busy-frizzy head of my roommate. Down toward Ludwig’s Fountain, around card tables and rows of barren sycamores, stood clumps of students with mouths agape, hands flying with emotion or wrapped securely around heavy stacks of books. And I asked myself, quite simply, why wasn’t I out there with them? It was the first time I had asked myself that question, even considered the possibility of joining the protesters. Why had I always rushed through the Plaza? Why had I never been over there searching for answers?
Dazed and depressed, I rose and moved forward until I stood about ten feet from the nearest table, twisting away and back again, not daring to focus for too long on the material in front of me, nor to make eye contact with those standing or sitting there. I squinted through the crowd in a deliberate effort to appear as if I were waiting to meet someone. All the radicals, I decided, male or female, were going to be argumentative, aggressive people, who would talk me into things I didn’t want to be talked into and make charges that I was ill-prepared to refute.
But what, I now asked myself, would I refute? That civil rights for Negroes was not a noble cause? That Vietnamese people weren’t humans with brains and families who had the right to decide among themselves how they wanted to live and die? That this war, in which Americans had used chemical weapons—disgusting and scary things like napalm—should not be stopped? Even I had heard about napalm. God knows where though.
A new thought hit me with high voltage. What was the point in being afraid of people who called my family the enemy, if the enemy was perpetuating the war that would send Matt to kill and be killed, and might even, some day, do the same to Aaron? I approached the row of wobbly card tables with signs taped across the front legs.
I scanned—stacks of literature, mimeographed sheets, Xeroxed pamphlets with black, boldface letters arranged as inflammatory phrases, or more sedate brochures, paid for by national organizations. I listened—certain words and phrases jetting through the crowd, absorbed like fists to my stomach: “Military-Industrial Complex,” “Negotiations Now!” “Immoral War!” “Black Power,” “Arms Race.” All of these provocative words attacked the established culture that fed and clothed me.
Mother and Daddy stood in the shop window of my mind like well-dressed mannequins, their frozen smiles behind the glass. Jean and Marshall Magill. They hung back behind my own reflection, unreachable and insentient. My throat was dry and thick with questions. The muscles in my knees felt weak. Hugging my notebook and texts, I made my way over to Ludwig’s Fountain. The brown, floppy-eared pooch for whom the fountain was named lay a couple of yards away, resting on the cobbled stones as if he, too, was weary of conflict.
I sat on the ledge surrounding the circular pool and tried to play through in my mind what I would say if I decided to approach one of the tables. I didn’t like the prospect of being harassed by hotheads. Would I be able to keep up with their rhetoric? Would I embarrass myself, as I had with Barbara Borovsky? Worse, would I get involved in something I didn’t want to get involved with, be forced to march, protest, make speeches in front of people, waste my time with these activities? Yes! Waste my time! Was I smug and self-satisfied like Barbara thought? No! I just found it impossible to imagine that I, Janet Magill, Cal Freshman, would be able to end the war in Vietnam.
But what if no one spoke out against the war, ever? What if none of these people were here? I swallowed hard, stood and squared my shoulders behind my load of books, and taking a step forward, tripped over a solid brown obstruction that had just risen and waddled over toward my feet.
Ludwig howled and I felt the burn as I caught myself on my hands and knees. I must have yelped as I sprawled out across the cobbled stones, with my books and purse now about two feet beyond my skinned hands. A half-dozen people came running to help me, while an equal number fussed over Ludwig. “Sorry doggie, sorry,” I cried out as strangers helped me to my feet and I brushed my torn tights, the new forest green ones that matched my plaid mini-skirt. Damn. Shit. All that. Here I was swearing and starting to cry with all these people around. I brushed at my hands and arms as they handed me back my books, stacked as neatly as their layers of sympathetic words. “I’m late for class,” I was saying.
But then there was a young man with a serious case of puckered brow, asking me if he could help and holding out a black-and-white leaflet. His sideburns, composed of scraggly wisps of dull brown hair, extended to his sharp jawbones. His eyes were insistent. “You might want one of these. There are more important facts in here than your professor will teach you today. Read it in class!”
“Well…okay. Thanks.” I tucked the leaflet into the pages of my notebook.
“It won’t bite.” He smiled. “Just read it. We’re all in this together, you know.”
I thanked him again, surprised by his gentleness. I hurried off into the crowd, heading straight through Sather Gate toward Wheeler Auditorium.
All through class, telling Aaron about Matt was on my mind. I devised conversations, then revised them as if editing a term paper. As I emerged onto the blacktop, the Campanile bells chiming, a moment of panic slid down my throat like a bad piece of meat. When Aaron spoke to me about common nightmares, was he shielding me from his own? Could he really be shipped out, just like Matt? I quickened my pace, heading for Freeborn Hall. I needed to rest and absorb all this before I talked to Aaron. I hoped I’d have some time before my roommate descended upon our tiny room.
TWO
That particular October evening, I swept my cottage hearth and stacked fresh logs, cleaning obsessively as I always did just before Janet was due for a visit. Taking my guitar out of its case, I leaned it against the bookshelves, then decided the Hoyt Axton album would set the mood. Strains of “Angel Cake and Wine” filled me with a pleasant heat even before the flame caught the brushwood.
Humming along with the Axton cut, I snatched a biochem book where it lay open on the floor, along with the notebook, pencils, and empty soda bottle—A & W Root Beer, always an essential component of my midterm exam preparation. Re-distributing this stuff appropriately, I began the ritual of cleaning Dork’s cage, mumbling sweet nothings to quiet squawks from my humble parakeet and tugging at the removable tray. After dumping the corncob shavings, well spiced after several days without a visit from Janet, I set to work scraping and scrubbing, then positioning the whole cage under the cool shower tap. I grabbed the cheap seat on the can to watch the avian circus and to fantasize about the evening ahead.
I formed a mental picture of Janet Magill, tall and sexy, standing in my doorway with the lamplight in her Irish green eyes. Then sitting cross-legged like a kindergartener at my hearth. Then relaxing, her long legs taking over the sheepskin rug, reclining… Perhaps this would be a special night for us.
Janet loved my new cottage, a pad worth every beaker and cloche I’d wash, working extra hours in the lab to make rent. Here was the perfect setting for a romantic evening, this one and all the many to come. The place was two quick strides by four in the front room, but it had a great cold-day-in-the-woods charm. A creek stone hearth, beamed ceiling, skylight, and my additions—the aquarium, second-hand hi-fi, and brick-and-board bookshelves. In the little chrysalis of a bedroom, I’d stuffed a queen-sized bed, an objective symbol of eternal hope, like the condom I carried around in my pocket: just in case. However, given my propensity for “good girls,” the type that were still saving it for the big commitment, my parakeet was my only roommate. I called him Dork as a benign reflection of our familiar relationship.
Like my queen-sized bed, Janet Magill objectified hope—actually, a whole range of hopes. She had these sophisticated mannerisms, always tossing exotic proper nouns into the conversation like hothouse vegetables into garden salad. Isadora Duncan and Andy Warhol. Waikiki Beach and the Champs Elysées. And French phrases…how I turned on to something as simple as merveilleux or au revoir. But she wasn’t snobbish about that or anything else. It had been a kick introducing Janet to my cottage, the university, and to the mysteries of independence—life without parents.
Barring the contingency goblins lurking over the shoulders of the even most rational scientists, now that I had Janet by my side, I was confident that nothing would deter me from achieving my goals: a successful career as a research scientist and a home and family more stable than I’d had as a kid. That vision, central to my life since Dad ran out on us, was finally within reach.
Dork snapped me back to the business at hand, bitching at top volume while he jumped around, pecking at his plumage under the spray. I wiped the wire bars down, replaced the cuttle bone and mineral block, and slid a fresh tray of shavings into the bottom of the cage. I was calming the bird with a few low whispers when I heard a timid knock at my cottage door.
“Bon soir,” I greeted Janet, swinging my arm toward the blazing hearth to usher her inside. My buoyant greeting snagged on my girlfriend’s wimpery breath and she stayed put. I stepped out into the shadows.
“You can’t imagine how I needed to see you tonight…that is…” she began. I stood still, bent toward her like a crowbar to better hear what came next. She hesitated, mouth pinched shut and eyes glazed with tears, bright as ice. I remembered that face from the day she walked up the hill to tell me that Woody Guthrie had died.
“Matt’s shipping out to Vietnam after the holidays,” she finally whispered. A vague snapshot of Janet’s big brother Matthew Magill, my ol’ scouting buddy, flashed through my mind. I tried to absorb what she had said.
“Jeez … Matthew…damn…” I mumbled, putting one arm around her back. The next thing I knew she had me in a childlike grip around my middle, her head against my chest. I let her hang on, praying she wouldn’t start to cry. Then gently, I kissed the top of her head and took her by the arm, guiding her inside and down onto the sheepskin rug in front of the fire.
“Couldn’t his hot-shot job get him deferred?” I asked. Matthew checked meters for L.A. Gas & Electric. Janet had told me that her father, a World War II vet and a big wheel at a large company, bragged interminably about his son starting out in an American public utility.
Janet shook her head and met my eyes. “Not a chance. He’s not in college, so he was fair game.” Dork let out a loud, sympathizing squawk. I reached for the hi-fi, lowered the volume.
“Shouldn’t we do something?” I asked. “Shouldn’t I call him, extend my sympathies?”
“No, you don’t understand,” she whined. “You’d be better off calling to congratulate him! He’s John Wayne and James Stewart rolled into one. He’s right there with my parents, and you know how they feel. ‘My Democrats, right or wrong.’” She paused, then after meeting my gaze, her baby-doll voice stiffened into a neatly targeted syllable: “Shit.”
“Yes. It’s that.” I chuckled before I could stop myself. I had never heard Janet use that particular word before. “Another new vocabulary word for freshman year?” I quipped.
“It’s to the point,” she snapped, then shrugged her shoulders and softened her tone. “You know the thing I’m most afraid of?” I shook my head.
“That war will change Matt. Even if he was a tease and an idiot sometimes, we used to, you know, play together. Hide and seek, belly laughs at Laurel & Hardy. We shared jokes my parents didn’t get. Innocent stuff. He is innocent now, the way I see it, and that’s why he wants to be the big war hero. He’s heard the World War II stories all his life from Daddy, and he’ll kill and maim, maybe even plunder and rape…” her voice cracked like a teenaged boy’s and she buried her face in her hands.
I rubbed her back. “He’s not a child, Janet, and neither are we.”
Her resentment wafted up from her lap. “He’ll be a tough vicious man.”
I whispered, “I’m sorry, Janet. But I hope so. That way Matthew will survive.”
She reached for her purse and some Kleenex, mopping up, obviously attempting bravery. “Shit and more shit,” she said. “I used to hate that word.”
Then she slid in to close the gap between us. Her eyes were drawn to the fire, which crackled to life, oblivious to her somber situation. She turned to me and sat up straight. “Aaron? Please don’t make fun of this?”
I flinched as if struck. “What kind of a sleaze to do you think I am?”
“Well. Okay, I’m sorry. But I know how sarcastic you can be sometimes.” She took a big breath and let it all out in one long string of words. “They’re giving Matt a going away bash during Christmas break with a bunch of Daddy’s hawkish friends and they’re so proud of him I can’t stand it. Don’t they know he could die?”
A long, mournful groan came straight from my gut. Her grateful smile faded quickly. “Please, please Aaron, will you come with me? Be my ally? I know you’re not comfortable doing the big Beverly Hills social scene, so that just makes me appreciate this even more.”
Janet knew what she was talking about. She and I had both grown up in Beverly Hills, but on different sides of Santa Monica Boulevard. I lived in an apartment with my mother and her complaints, while Janet lived in a big house with a father, mother, brother, terrier, and two maids.
“Okay, yes, of course…” I nodded, sliding my hands down to grab hold of hers.
Outside a motorcycle roared by, catching our attention. Then we heard laughter and the shouting and jostling of a group getting ready to depart. I had lived in the big house adjacent to my cottage for the previous two years. Tonight I was especially happy to be sprung from group life. “Students in the big house are on their way down the hill to a meeting,” I explained. “Stop the Draft Week.”
“I know. I’ve seen them.” There followed a few seconds of dead silence. Janet picked industriously at strands of wool between her crossed legs. When she ceased vilifying my rug, she began staring at me with a scowl.
“What?” I reached out to her, but she brushed my hand away.
“Don’t you see, Aaron? My roommate has firm convictions. I admire that. I wish I could do something, not just add to the chatter against the war, but work…work hard to end it.”
I groaned, but stayed calm, reminding myself that my girlfriend had only been at Cal for a few weeks. “We’ve been all through this, kiddo. You know I hate this illegal war, but those dogmatic speakers and their herds of stampeding buffalo are counterproductive.”
“But you hate the war more than the protesters, don’t you? Aren’t you ever tempted to go out there? To help them?”
“Oh sure,” I snickered, trying to lift the mood. “Johnson’s war machine will squeal to a halt like a hyena on a leash just because a few children are having tantrums. Trust me. It’s worse than a waste of time…it’s fodder for the reporters and for the hawks.”
Then suddenly, as if her lit fuse had just touched powder, Janet’s voice flared and echoed in the small space: “But I just don’t know if you’re right or not!”
I shot up on my knees and leaned toward her, shouting over Dork’s noisy empathy. “Don’t you know people with power have less respect for the radicals than they do for the Viet Cong? I think about what I might do to change things, and I’m sure my letters to D.C. have been transferred directly to landfill and yes! that leaves me feeling powerless. But hell, until I figure out something better, that’s my way of working on it.”
Janet slumped down. “I just wonder how many will die before you figure it out.”
“I’m sorry, Janet. I know you want to help Matthew, but your roommate’s tactics are not the way. Most students hate the war, but relatively few college students are actually involved with protest groups. There’s good reason for that.”
She glanced at me, shrugged her shoulders, and her gaze was drawn by the fire. I got up to get her a tissue, which she accepted and blew her nose with great fanfare. Even in this miserable condition, she outshone my dazzling hearth. Slightly parted, pouty lips, big eyes, and thin flushed cheeks, all nicely framed with a mass of long, dark hair. She knew I was smiling at her, but she wasn’t returning it. I rocked back on my heels and gave her my best crock-o-shit smirk. “Hey listen. I’d stand in the middle of Sproul Plaza with a placard until my feet bonded with the pavement if I thought it would help.”
But all she said was, “At least you have your convictions about the protests, and you’re paying attention.” I dropped to my rug again and reached for Janet’s hand. She continued, “Today I read a leaflet from Sproul Plaza and took a book on Vietnamese history out of the library. Then I bought a New York Times. Have you ever heard of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?”
A knot hit my stomach and a snicker reached only to the level of my throat. Was it really the first time this girl had heard of the legislation that Johnson used to justify waging undeclared but de facto war? My quick reaction was to force a straight-face. “Hmm, I seem to remember. Tell me.”
She regurgitated the text, fresh from her day’s foray into previously ignored information, concluding her explanation with a brief but sincere measure of self-flagellation. “But that’s the very first time I’ve read more than headlines in all these years! That’s terrible, isn’t it?”
“So you’ve been oblivious,” I comforted, “but you’re at Cal now, with information all around you. Be patient with yourself.”
She sighed and bit her lip, her eyes focused in the region of my chin, as if she were talking to herself. “There’s all this serious, life-and-death stuff going on in the world, and I’m sad because I’m missing the myth of college. What I crave is art and music and science and you and me, falling in love. And I do want to do something significant with my life. Just like you do.”
“Of course! And you’re a smart girl. You will. I’m sure of it.”
“But with all of these new interests and ambitions, I’ve never wanted to think about the war, and there it stands, like Godzilla, casting a monstrous dark shadow. I’ve…well, I guess I’ve been as shallow as a puddle.”
“Okay, so you’ve been a puddle, but now you’re starting to dig deeper. It’s a start…”
She giggled. “I’ll be a deep puddle.” Her lips puckered into a sour-candy smile. “I will read now, everything I possibly can. I want to know, not just since Matt…but being here where people talk about the world. People like Barbara and her friends. It makes me want to do something, anything. Maybe if enough people scream, the government will listen.”
“Not if it’s only the kids.”
“The kids,” she echoed, bitterly. “Like Matt, kids playing with real live ammunition.” Janet held my hand with the grip of a hand wrestler. “Aaron…oh for heaven’s sake! Don’t you realize that you could be next? Aren’t you worried?” I stared at the fire, wondering how it kept jumping in a room that felt so airless. I had always kept my head down, staying out of trouble, studying hard, cleaning up after myself. I’d made an effort to be civil around my mother, patient with my girlfriend, kind to my pet. All this behavior had succeeded in bringing me to the brink of a good and purposeful life. I refused to believe that my carefully constructed edifice could be wiped out now.
“I’ll be fine,” I mumbled.
“What?”
“I said don’t worry. It’s not fair, but they just don’t waste people like me.
“But once you graduate?”
“Hey, let’s run away to Paris together…just hop a plane and go!” I declared.
“This isn’t funny, Aaron, maybe you should come up with a plan, a blueprint…”
“Someday we’ll walk along the Seine holding hands and picking spring blossoms out of each other’s hair along with the grit from not washing for a month.”
Then, blessedly, she laughed. That was one of the great things about Janet. She appreciated my humor even when we both knew it wasn’t bankable material. She blew her nose again. “Leslie Caron never had grit in her hair, you moron. And oui, mon amour, I do want to run away to Paris together someday. That’s why I hope you…”
“Hell, you’re so gorgeous,” I said. “Let’s not talk about the war anymore.”
“But we have to talk about it, don’t we?” she asked, even as she shifted her incredibly long legs to the other side of her body and removed her cardigan. Maybe this would be the night. Maybe we were both just that fed-up with the status quo. I moved in to stroke her back, my thumb snagging on the bra beneath her soft blouse.
It was smooth, the way we dropped together onto the sheepskin pelt as automatically as rain to earth, both fondling while she positioned her head snugly on my shoulder. The distant sound of bells from the Campanile reminded me that she had to be back in Freeborn Hall by eleven or be locked out for the night. I inched forward until Janet’s rapt green eyes were directly in front of mine, held her face in my two hands and drew her forward for the kind of long, gentle kiss that women are supposed to love. I held her close and whispered our joke about her Wonder Glow makeup. How I loved that name…and the pleasure of warm cheeks, the fire, Axton’s deep throaty rhythms, and the blazing glow inside.
The next kiss was more passionate and I thought about the phenomenal year ahead. Janet scratched my back gently with her long fingernails and I rolled on top of her. I heard a soft “whoosh” as next to our prone bodies a white-hot log fell into the soft pile of ash. I ran my hand along the lovely length of her torso, untucked her blouse from scratchy wool pants and pushed my hand up inside. Then, stroke and kiss and suffer as usual, but this time, hoping for a payoff, I whispered, “When I feel close to you like this, I want to go for it.”
Deftly, Janet rolled away from beneath, leaving me with a mouth full of foul sheep’s fuzz. “Oh shoot…” she breathed heavily. “I’ve got to calm down.” She fanned herself with the bottom of her blouse, then touched the back of her hand to her forehead as if she were taking her temperature. “We’ve got to take it easy, Aaron.”
“Why…why should we take it easy…?” I drew the condom from my pocket and held it up to her. “Do you know what this is?” I asked.
She touched it briefly, drawing her hand away as if it were contaminated. “Those things break. They’re not safe. Mother told me that was how Matt got born after Daddy left for Europe.” I snorted, but she whispered, “Please put it away, Aaron. I’m sorry.” Above us, my parakeet tapped patiently at seed, while the aquarium motor hummed. Even the zebra danios and rainbow fish are getting some, I thought. Only Dork and I remain celibate.
“You know how I feel about it, don’t you?” she asked. “I’m not ready for any big steps just yet, and…”
“Haven’t I told you’re the only one I’ll ever want?” I cut her off. “That more than anything, I want to be with you? And that I never want to do a repeat of my parents’ divorce? This could be the start of our future together!” Abruptly, I halted my speechmaking, took a deep breath and blew it out, fighting for control. I hated how desperate I sounded.
“I remember,” her voice went flat. “You were ten years old when your dad left.” She stared blankly into the flames.
Suddenly I felt as cynical about love as I did about politics. “Their whole generation was repressed,” I said. “And now ours, I guess. Poor Freud lived and died for nothing.”
Janet reached out to take my hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But it won’t always be this way. I do hope someday. I do want you to be the one.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to get up here, Janet, to grow up a bit. I assumed we meant something special to each other.”
“We do! That’s why I’m worried about you. And the draft and Matt.”
How in hell did we get back to this? I wondered. “Okay, I should have understood.” I got up and after two paces, searched the kitchen drawers for my stash of weed, more for the relief of activity than for the object. “Want a little smoke? I’ve got some weed here somewhere.”
“Not tonight, thank you,” she replied as politely as if I’d offered her a cup of tea.
“Or we can play guitar, sing some Dylan or the Byrds. You love the Byrds and I love to hear you play and sing. Maybe it would make us feel better.”
“I don’t want to feel better!” she burst out. “Why do I have that privilege when Matt…? I just can’t, Aaron. I can’t just sit by with my brother going over to that awful place where he should not have to go! I want to work with them, no matter what!”
“Work with who?” I asked, confused.
“With Barbara Borovsky and her friends. With others trying to accomplish what I’m desperate to accomplish. The end of the war.”
“Dammit, Janet. What are you saying?”
“You have your answer, and that’s fine for you. But your answer is not mine.”
“By tomorrow, you’ll calm down.”
“By tomorrow, I’ll be one of them!”
“You’re a lunatic,” I shouted. “You’ll do this without me!”
“Of course! I wouldn’t expect…I have to, can’t you see?” She glared at me, breathless, as if she’d just been caught with her hand in the cashbox. She waited to see if I would arrest her, admonish her, or gently remove her hand, already gripping a fistful of bills, and let her go.
“I just worry about you, that’s all. About your disillusionment, not to mention your physical safety.”
“What do you mean, ‘physical safety’?” she asked, as innocent as a turkey before Thanksgiving.