“And believe me, Sylvia, that’s exactly what we’re gonna do.”
The steely determination and deep passion in his voice sound like Norton, only there’s an edge of violence to it, like a volcano threatening to erupt. I wonder what he means about making them listen? Make who listen? How? My questions now are similar to the ones I asked Norton when I returned from the women’s peace camp in New York in the summer of 1984. Similar also to the ones I asked him when we were on trial for trespassing at Nectaral Plaza on Good Friday, the questions that threatened our relationship.
I flash Corey a conciliatory smile. “Your dad was a skeptic, too.”
His response is quick, automatic. “Yeah, well, a lot of good that did him . . . or us.”
I hold back, careful not to injure him like Norton and I injured each other with words.
He curls his hands into fists. “Mom kept Dad’s secrets, but after she passed, I found his journal. It’s all there. All documented. I know everything.”
My heart stops beating. He knows everything? Does that mean Chloe, Norton’s wife, knew about our relationship? Is that what Corey’s rage is about? Do I really want to know?
“That was a long time ago,” I mumble.
He reaches across the table and his hand bumps against my mug. Coffee splatters onto my blouse. He leans forward, points his finger at me.
“It’s not over,” he says through gritted teeth. “Mark my words, Sylvia, it’s not anywhere near over.”
FOUR
1984
By summer, my love for Norton was more intense than the hot sun; it bloomed brighter than the wildest and most colorful profusion of flowers ever seen in the Midwest. I loved the way his skin stretched down over his high cheekbones and settled into either frown or smile lines on the outsides of his lips, the way his green eyes twinkled with kindness and burned with anger, the tingle of his fingertips on my skin. But as my love for him deepened, so too did my guilt. He was married. His wife, Chloe, thought we were just friends. He had a son, Corey, who was only four years old and needed his father. Many times I told myself I had to let him go, but I never could. Instead, I drank.
A widespread sense that summer, among our activist friends, was that the world was a more dangerous place than ever. Norton and I, to counter our fear that we were on the brink of nuclear annihilation, went to more rallies, protests, sit-ins. We drank more. We made love with more intensity. Our passion for each other and our passion for saving the planet were indistinguishable. We saw ourselves as the warp and woof of a global tapestry without understanding that its design was too complex for us to grasp.
I decided that summer to go to the Seneca Women’s Peace Camp in New York, which had been established near a military base where nuclear weapons were being stored. How could I not do my part when women at a similar camp at Greenham Common in England had been protesting the planned deployment of those weapons since 1981? I didn’t know that my decision to go would mark the beginning of the end for Norton and me.
He came to see me off. “Do what you have to do.” That was his farewell to me as I boarded one of two buses that would take ninety-nine of us Monrow City women to New York. His voice was firm and he smiled, but the lines around his lips drooped, and he looked unwell. I didn’t think of it as an omen at the time. I just thought it meant he would miss me. The bus drove slowly away from the parking lot, and I stuck my arm out the window and waved and waved until he was an indistinguishable dot on the landscape. Then I settled back in my seat.
“Welcome, ladies!” Jennifer, the twenty-something, blue-jean-clad intern from the Peace and Justice Coalition, stood at the front of the bus with a microphone. “Thousands of women will be going to the camp between now and Labor Day, but our contingent is the largest.”
Expressions of pride rippled through the bus.
“Will there be enough room for us?” It was Maddie, our resident worrywart.
Jennifer flicked her hand in what could be interpreted as being either dismissive or reassuring, depending on how you felt about the question or the questioner. “The camp is on a fifty-two-acre farm,” she said. “Plenty of space to accommodate us. But, of course, the size of the camp is nothing compared to the eleven-thousand-acre Seneca Army Depot.”
“How many nuclear weapons are stored at the depot?” This time Maddie shouted louder and with a lot more anxiety in her voice.
Jennifer smiled, but she also let out a barely disguised sigh, like she thought everyone on the trip should already know the answer to that question. “The military neither denies nor confirms the presence of nuclear weapons,” she said. “So we don’t know.”
We passed some middle school boys playing soccer on a grassy field and that got me thinking about the children who lived near the Seneca depot. What would happen to them if there were a nuclear attack or, God forbid, a nuclear accident? I’d read that there were emergency evacuation plans only for on-base personnel.
Mary Lou, in the seat next to me, poked me with her elbow. “If I lived in the town of Romulus, I sure wouldn’t want to be so close to the depot.” I attributed Mary Lou’s propensity for giving voice to my thoughts to years of experience, given that she was eighty-nine years old and a great-grandmother of six, but maybe she’d always been a reader of people’s minds.
“Our briefing materials said that the town is totally dependent on the depot,” I said. “The military even controls its water supply.”
Mary Lou huffed her disgust. “Yeah. The depot land is valued at two hundred and fifty million, and you want to know how much it pays in property tax?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Not a cent. Not a single penny.”
“So I guess people must depend on the depot for jobs then,” I said.
Mary Lou shrugged and raised her hand. “Jennifer? Do you know how many townspeople work at the depot?”
“Only a few,” the intern said. “Most of the fourteen hundred jobs at the depot aren’t open to local residents.”
“You’d think they could at least hire people from the town to do the cooking and cleaning if nothing else,” Mary Lou mumbled.
“Two hundred to two hundred fifty of the depot jobs are for military police,” Jennifer said. “They’re trained in anti-terrorism and authorized to use deadly force.” She paused to let that sink in.
Gasps rippled up and down the length of the bus. Moisture seeped into my T-shirt from under my armpits. Would we be considered terrorists? Surely not. We were just a bunch of middle-aged white women, respectable-looking mothers and grandmothers from the Midwest. Surely the military police wouldn’t use deadly force against us. Or would they? I scrunched down in my seat with Norton’s words—Do what you have to do—ringing ominously in my ears.
“Ladies!” The microphone squealed. “Sorry.” Bertha Pickering looked a lot younger than her sixty-four years in a blazing orange T-shirt and long denim skirt that brushed against her ankles. “I have something to say. I know that’s unusual.” She chuckled. “Seriously. We must not be pessimistic. Our job this week is to stop the shipment of nuclear weapons to Europe. Our mission is not impossible! Remember, we’ll be less than fourteen miles from where Elizabeth
