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 sake,” I say. “Your future.”
“And yet Kim Jong-un still has a nuclear missile launch button on his desk, doesn’t he?” He spits out the words like bitter fruit on his tongue.
“I know,” I say.
Just then a waitress appears. She plunks two mugs on the table and fills them with coffee without asking if we want any. Some things never change.
“Okay, folks.” She pulls out a pencil and order pad from her apron pocket, then taps her foot on the worn linoleum and rolls her eyes. When I order a chocolate malt and Corey orders two eggs over easy with bacon and hash browns, she gives us a Well, it’s about time sigh and stalks off.
“Your father loved it that Nick’s serves breakfast twenty-four hours a day.” Corey furrows his brow. I don’t tell him he’s just ordered Norton’s favorite dinner.
My iPhone beeps, a text from J. B. Sorry I missed the memorial. Got caught up with the protesters outside. Where are you? I text back, tell him I’m at the diner and invite him to join us. “That was my friend J. B.,” I tell Corey. “He’s an investigative reporter with the New York Times. He was supposed to meet me at the church but didn’t make it.”
Corey doesn’t seem interested. “I s’pose you’re going to the protest at Nectaral.” His set jaw is a dare.
“I haven’t decided.” I don’t tell him about the tug-of-war in my heart during the memorial service, the struggle between two parts of me—the one that works to remain composed and serene, and the one that surges with passion to act, to be more impulsive, more unstinting. More like I used to be, more like I imagine Bertha Pickering was.
“How about you,” I ask. “Are you planning to go?”
He jerks his head from side to side. “Protests don’t change anything. No one pays attention.”
“I do plan to get signatures on the petition in support of the UN treaty to ban nuclear weapons. One hundred and twenty-two other countries have already adopted it.”
He shakes his head. “Nothing but pie in the sky. Another hollow effort. We have to do something to make things change fast.”
“That’s not how change happens, I’m afraid. I wish it did.”
His face freezes, hard, like a stone. “Then we’re doomed.”
“Not necessarily.” I could cite examples of how things have changed over time after long periods of struggle, but I don’t want to get into an argument. “I don’t know,” I say instead. “Maybe we’re doomed no matter what we do. Sometimes it’s hard to have hope.”
The muscles
