Twenty-three

For days I couldn’t walk to school or leave it without feeling eyes on me, couldn’t go into a store or out of the house without looking around nervously for the two agents and wondering where they were. In a car? In an office building? Loitering in the crowded downtown streets? I saw the two of them everywhere. Even at night, asleep, I wasn’t safe from them. Toward the end of the week, as I was walking home from school, I crossed the boulevard and saw the blue car with the two agents in the front seat. There it was—there they were—parked boldly in front of a gas station. Suddenly I was enraged and ran toward them, shouting. “Why are you watching me? What do you want? I have nothing to tell you!” I rapped on the back of the car, rapped on the window.

A man I’d never seen before gave me a frightened glance. In the passenger seat, the other “agent,” a golden-haired retriever sitting tall, thumped its tail.

‘Sorry,” I mumbled. “Sorry … a mistake.”

That sorry incident told me I had to pull myself together. I was OD’ing on paranoia. Sunday morning, after breakfast, I phoned Cary. “Do you want to do something today? I do.”

“I’m taking Kim to the park.”

“Okay, I’ll come over.”

“If you want to.”

Why did she sound so cool? I thought of that rainy afternoon in my room the week before. We’d kissed … and kissed … then she’d pushed me away, been close to anger. How about me? How about what I want? I’d been afraid she’d go away and I’d never see her again, and I’d said, My parents … my parents are in hiding.… I’d been on the verge of saying everything; instead I’d mumbled, chewed up the words.

“I want to see you, Cary.”

“Fine.” She hung up.

It was a hot, sunny day and the park was crowded. I found Cary pushing Kim on a swing. “Hi!” I was glad to see her.

“Hello.” She had on her aloof Princess face.

“Hi, Kimmer.”

“Hello, big feet.”

“Moi?” I glanced at Cary. Not even a hint of a smile. I watched her intently for a few minutes. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Yes, something is. I can tell.”

She shrugged. “I’m just wondering why you condescended to come over here this morning. Didn’t have anything better to do?”

“Cary, you’re not making any sense to me. What are you talking about?”

“Our so-called friendship.”

“So-called!”

“Real friends care about each other.”

“I care about you. I don’t understand.”

She glanced at Kim and lowered her voice. “I don’t think caring about someone is just a little grabbing and groping—”

That hurt. “Is that all you think I—No, you’re wrong.”

“You haven’t phoned once this week. You haven’t stopped in the shop for one moment, even just to say hello.”

I fought back. “You could have called me.”

“You know how my mother feels about girls calling boys. I want to know just one thing, Pete. Did you stay away because I made it clear I wasn’t going to go as far as you wanted?”

“No! No, Cary, that has nothing to do with it.”

“Guys don’t like it when you say, ‘Okay, this far and no farther.’ What makes you so different?”

“Maybe I’m not, but I wouldn’t not see you because of that. I was just—I’ve been in a really foul mood. Sort of depressed and … you know. I didn’t want to dump it on you.”

“I want to believe you. I’ve been thinking the worst things—”

“I should have called, I just—I was so tense and—”

“Did you just get into a blue mood, or what?”

I wanted to hang on to her sympathy. “Something happened. Something bad.”

“What was it?”

A line of girls roller-skated by on the walkway, shouting above the clicking of their skates. I stared at them as if they could give me the answer to give Cary. I couldn’t tell her about the agents, not without telling her everything. My mind blurred, I felt tired, very tired, and I sat down on a swing.

The chains creaked, a kid yelled, and all at once I was back in a summer afternoon in a park with my mother.

In the middle of the park, there’s a stone animal, a rhinoceros. I run up to it, I want to climb on its back, but my mother says children aren’t allowed.… Anyway, we’re playing Hide-and-Seek, it’s her turn to hide, and I can’t find her.… Where ARE you? I yell. I’m furious, it’s not fair for her to hide so long. I yell again, if you don’t come back right away, I might get really angry, Laura! Then I hear her laugh, I look all around, and suddenly I find her, lying flat on her belly behind the stone animal. I found you, I win, I win, I shout, and she lets me climb all over her.

Abruptly I hopped off the swing and walked away. I circled the park, waiting for the heat of the memory to cool. When I got back, Cary was sitting on the rim of the sandbox, watching Kim digging. I sat down next to her. “Cary—” I touched her arm and heard myself saying, “The reason I didn’t call you has to do with some things I’ve never told anyone.”

I had one cautionary thought—stop—and then I went ahead anyway. “It’s about my parents. They—they’re not dead.”

“What?” She stared at me.

“They’re not dead. They’re in hiding.”

“I don’t understand. I thought they were dead, you said so. You told me that.”

“I know. I had to say it, because of what they did. They bombed a lab, but let me tell you why. It was a protest, a symbolic protest.” The words, the images, the ideas, the explanations spurted out, just as I’d imagined and feared, like water flowing irresistibly from an underground spring. Once started, impossible to stem the flow. I couldn’t tell what Cary was thinking, I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted to.

I told her everything. About Laura’s and Hal’s concern for the earth, and how they’d protested nuclear research and the arms race for years. “They used to go on marches, and demonstrate in front of the White House and the Pentagon, stuff like that. At their graduation from college, when I was just a little kid, they walked out because some general came to speak. They did all sorts of things for years, just kept doing this and that, once they raised a flag on the Statue of Liberty—just to get people to think! It didn’t matter what they did, everything kept going on, wars, weapons, the arms race, bombs. They felt things were getting too close to the edge, you know what they say, ‘we’re five minutes from midnight.’ They had to do something that would arouse people, something more than raising banners or symbolically spilling blood.”

I knew the phrases by heart. My parents’ words. I had grown up with them. But even if I had forgotten them, I had found them again in the library, peppered throughout the newspaper and magazine articles about Laura and Hal. For years these phrases, my parents’ words and reasons, had been locked away in my head. Now I was sending them out into the air, into Cary’s ear, into the wind. My voice was controlled, neither loud nor soft, but my hands flew apart, I stood up, paced around and sat down again. And all the time, I was also somewhere outside myself, hovering near the swings or perched on the limb of a tree. Pax observing Pete observing Pax spouting off.

“So they bombed a laboratory?”

“Yes. Because it was doing germ warfare research.”

“A bomb—but that’s so dangerous. Why did they have to do that? Who told them to do it?”

“Nobody told them. They’re part of a group, a little group of people … Like I told you, all the other stuff wasn’t doing any good—”

“Wait, wait!” Cary put up her hand. “Stop. Just stop for a moment. Your parents are wanted people? Like the Ten Most Wanted List? This is not true, is it? It’s a sick joke, a put-on.” A smile waited at the edge of her mouth.

“Cary,” I said as forcefully as possible. “It’s the truth. I’ve told you something no one else knows.”

Her mouth quivered, then suddenly she said, “What time is it?” She stood up and looked around. “I’d better take Kim home.”

“Cary, wait—”

“What?”

You’re right! It’s a send-up. Black humor, a cosmic joke. Forget everything I said. “I—why do you have to go now?”

“Kim!” she called. She took the child by the arm, swung her over the edge of the sandbox, and walked away.

“Cary!”

She didn’t answer, she didn’t turn back.