'Yes. And it's clear I'm meant to notice. And it's clear you want me to argue against the man.'
'This is totally. No no no no,' Marian said mildly.
'You can't bring yourself to argue against him. You want me to doit.'
'And you sense all this, sort of.'
'Not sort of. Hard and clear.'
'And what happens when you argue against him? Do I say thank-you mother you've saved me from a fate worse.'
'Of course not. You defend him. You stand up for him.'
'She stands up for her man. And you what, you infer all this from a little bitty talk in which I said practically nothing about him.'
'Tell me I'm wrong,' her mother said, 'and I'll make every effort to believe you.'
Her mother turned toward the window showing a faint annoyance. They were running in the streets. They were probably throwing bricks and starting fires. There was a bullhorn voice mixed in with the music that ripped from the speakers.
'They have what they call the riot season.'
'Did it ever occur to me,' Marian said, 'that Chicago would seem peaceful and decent?'
'I don't know if this is the riot season or not. Maybe it's just a block party that the police are trying to contain. Although, no, that can't be right. They have block parties in the spring.'
'I'll come back for Thanksgiving if you'll make them stop that noise.'
Her mother said, 'Is he married?'
And instantly regretted it. Marian saw the self-reproach in the tilt of her mother's mouth. Yes, a rare lapse. It diminished the authority of her earlier remarks and was totally unthought-out, a lapse, a tactical mistake, and the color in her mother's face went flat. Because if he were married, one, why would Marian talk about him without saying so; and, two, why would she talk about him at all?
'No, of course not.'
'Of course not. I know that,' her mother said.
Marian went upstairs feeling better. She loved her old room. She loved coming back because the quiet streets were here, in theory, and the houses with screened sunporches, and the elmed esplanades and university buildings, and because her room was here, kept safe for her, spare, unspecial, unfussed over, but a place no one could see as she did, containing a sizable measure of what is meant by home.
She started packing for the trip back, taking some winter things out of the closet, and then stopped just long enough to turn on the radio. She found WIBA, Up Against the Wall FM, because she wanted to know what was going on out there, just as a point of exasperated interest, and because the noise was getting louder.
It was too soon to pack but she did it anyway. Home is the place where they have to take you in, said the poet, or said Marian's father paraphrasing the poet, and home is also the place you can't wait to get the hell out of.
She had a job in Chicago she hated. Only she didn't really hate it- she'd acquired gestures of discontent because this seemed to be a thing you were supposed to do. She was twenty-five and saw no future doing backroom work in a brokerage house. But the job was okay in a way because it forced her to be disciplined and involved and unsloppy, and anyway there was nothing else she wanted to try just now.
The radio said, DowDay DowDay DowDay DowDay.
She rummaged through the dresser, finding a couple of old sweaters that might be passable, still, and a number of bright stocking caps that were funny and dumb.
The dresser was the one object in the room worth a second look, outside the text of personal reference-an oak piece fitted with a tall scuffed mirror that was hinged to swivels in a graceful trefoil frame.
The radio said, PigPigPigPigPigPigPig.
She began to understand that some of the noise in the streets, the music and voices ripping from speakers that students had placed in their windows, was coming from the station she was tuned to.
She packed and listened.
The radio said, Faculty Document 122 authorizes force against students. Faculty Document 122 authorizes force against students.
She began to understand that this was Vietnam Week on campuses across the country. And this was Dow Day here in Madison, a protest against Dow Chemical, whose recruiters were active on campus and whose products included a new and improved form of napalm with a polystyrene additive that made jellied matter cling more firmly to human flesh.
Faculty Document 122 authorizes force against students.
She thought, Small wonder. Because it sounded as if the students were tearing up the campus and it looked as if, earlier in the day, with Vietcong flags on Linden Street and mimes in whiteface tussling with police on Bascom Hill-it looked as if what?
The station was reporting Dow Day and seemingly taking part.
The radio said, PigPigPigPigPigPigPig.
It looked as if something had happened in the night to change the rules of what is thinkable.
She began to understand that the riot out there, if that's what it was, was being augmented and improved by a simulated riot on the radio, an audio montage of gunfire, screams, sirens, klaxons and intermittent bulletins real and possibly not.
She found the old coat she thought she'd lost-how do you lose a coat, everybody said-five years ago at the lake.
The radio said, Take your belt and wrap it around your fist.
When her mother served pork loin last night her father muttered, 'Off the pig,' and somehow it wasn't meant to be funny although when Marian laughed he did too, a little bitterly.
The radio said, There's an ANFO bulletin coming up.
She was supposed to go to school at night but wasn't, to learn Stocks, bonds, debentures and other instruments of material wealth available for the production of more wealth, but wasn't because she just wasn't, but would, and soon, knowing what she knew, that she needed outside forces to counteract her tendencies.
She wanted to call Nick but knew he wouldn't be there.
The radio played recorded gunfire, car crashes, lines of gritty dialogue from old war movies.
Her mother called her remiss and indifferent. She suffered from disambition, said her mother.
Faculty Document 122 authorizes force against students. Faculty Document 122 authorizes force against students.
She listened to this because it was happening here but she also tuned out intermittently, let her attention wander, as a form of self-defense. There was a kind of tiredness to it all. It had that wearying insistence that made her want to tune out.
She packed and thought of calling, even though he wasn't there, to leave a message with someone in the school office, clever and sexy, and he wouldn't like that at all but she thought she might do it anyway.
ANFO seemed to be an acronym for ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.
She put the sweaters back in the dresser. She'd pick them up at Thanksgiving if she thought she needed them and if she didn't change her mind about their passability, which she was in the process of doing.
The radio said, Kafka without the
PigPigPigPigPigPigPig.
She dug a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket in the suitcase. Then she opened a window and lit one up. The noise came blowing in, bullhorn cops, news bulletins, rock music, and she turned off the radio and sat by the window smoking.
She'd seen a multicolored Volkswagen beetle with painted faces in the windows, earlier in the day, on Babcock Drive.
She sat there blowing smoke out the window because her mother was supposedly allergic and would have preferred, in any case, that Marian did not smoke, and they were taking off their belts and wrapping them around their fists.
