Nuclear Option. Dorothy Van Soest

mouth. He sure did love that pickle, sucked on it like you wouldn’t believe. He still loves pickles.” The brightness disappears from his eyes and he stares at the wall. “She had a miscarriage.”

      I reach across the table to touch his arm. He flinches and pulls away, sits farther back on the bench. “Did you know my mom, too?”

      I wince. “Not well.”

      “She had to raise me alone.”

      I nod.

      “She lied about my dad.” He spits the words out through pursed lips. “She never told me the truth.”

      My tongue freezes in my mouth. What truth? What does he know?

      “She should have told me.” He tightens his jaw and shakes his head. “It could have made a difference.” He stares down at the table again. “But now it’s too late.”

      “It’s never too late, Corey.” It’s a dumb thing to say. I don’t know why I said it.

      He jerks his head back, his eyes flare. “And maybe, Sylvia, sometimes it is too late.” He jumps up, tosses a ten-dollar bill on the table. “Maybe sometimes it is.”

      He turns on his heel and stalks off, leaving me stunned and confused and holding my head in my hands, chastising myself for saying it. I don’t know what he’s talking about and I’m not sure I want to know. The truth is, I’m afraid to know.

      “So this is where you’re hiding out.”

      I look up at J. B. and smile. “You are a sight for sore eyes,” I say, admiring his salon hairstyle, his clothes, worn to perfection like a model in GQ magazine. He grins and sits down across from me.

      “Some guy almost knocked me over when I came in the door.”

      “He was with me.”

      “What’d you do to him to make him run out of here like a bat out of hell?”

      I laugh. It feels good to laugh. “It’s a long story,” I say.

      “I’ll take the short version.”

      “His name is Corey Cramer. He’s the son of a man I knew a long time ago. I just met him tonight.”

      J. B. raises his eyebrows. “And?”

      “His father’s name was Norton.”

      “And?”

      “I was in love with him.”

      He grins.

      “It’s complicated. I’ll tell you about it sometime. So, what happened? I saved you a seat at the memorial.”

      “Got caught up with another angle for my story.”

      “What story?”

      “It’s complicated. I’ll tell you about it sometime.” His back-at-you teasing makes me laugh again. “So what’s with this Corey guy? Why’s he so pissed off?”

      “I don’t know. I wish I did but I probably never will.”

      SIX

      1984

      For weeks, Norton and I stubbornly performed, like a memorized script, our different interpretations about what I’d done at the women’s peace camp. We finally closed down the show when the fissure between us grew so wide we feared we’d never find our way back to each other. But that didn’t mean the conflict was resolved, only that it went underground. Until the night of our affinity group meeting, when it bubbled to the surface and brought us another step closer to the end.

      The seven of us met at my apartment to prepare for going on trial. All seventy-eight of the folks who were arrested at Nectaral headquarters on Good Friday had pleaded not guilty to trespassing and had requested trials, which would have jammed up the court docket for a year and a half. So the city attorney’s office had agreed that we could go on trial in our affinity groups. Ours was scheduled for November, and this was our first planning meeting.

      Norton came early. “I’m really looking forward to this,” I said. Our trial was an opportunity for me to atone for losing control in New York, a chance to prove that I was able to channel my passion in a thoughtful way. But I didn’t tell him that. I knew he still didn’t think I had anything to atone for.

      I hugged him, and felt his body pull away ever so slightly. “There’s beer in the fridge. You can help me put out the snacks.”

      He seemed distracted and his feet dragged. I noticed a slight weave to his step as he headed for the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of beer, then emptied a box of crackers into the basket on the table. Moving more slowly than usual, he tucked the bottle under his arm, picked up the basket and a plate of cheese slices, and went to the living room. I followed with a tray of wine, beer, and glasses and set them on my old chipped coffee table.

      I patted the space next to me on my faux-leather couch. “A little snuggle before the others get here?”

      He didn’t answer, just walked over to the pulpit chair next to the couch. I didn’t recall him ever sitting in it before. Nor had I ever seen him look this anguished. Tormented, actually. He lowered himself down on the red velvet cushion and pressed his back against the elaborately carved wood, gripping the left armrest with one hand, a bottle of beer with his right. Then he glanced at me from the corner of his eye.

      “What’s wrong, Norton?”

      His eyes were moist and he attempted a smile, but it came out more like a grimace. Like he was in pain. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. I poured myself a glass of white zinfandel, raised it in a toast to him. He took a swig of beer without raising his bottle first. His hand was trembling. At the sound of a loud knock on the door, his bottle slipped onto his lap and splashed beer onto the red velvet cushion.

      I invited the other five affinity group members into the living room, one eye welcoming them with a smile and the other eye watching Norton, my head running down a list of things that could be wrong. Number one on the list—that he was going to break up with me—I found unbearable to think about.

      Madeline grabbed a napkin, half a dozen crackers and cheese slices, and a bottle of beer. “Too busy at work for lunch today, and I’m starving,” she said. She had come straight from the office and was still in full-fledged work mode in a lawyerly black pantsuit and matching black thick-framed glasses.

      Jim, who’d carried the cross with a nuclear bomb on his back at the Good Friday action, gave me a warm hug, his eyes twinkling with affection. Then he went over to Norton, talking to me over his shoulder. “What church did you get this beautiful chair from, Sylvia?”

      “It was in the Bronx,” I said. “My ex-husband did his seminary internship there, in the sixties.”

      His head tipped to the side with surprise. “You, a minister’s wife?”

      I laughed and said, “A lousy one.”

      He nodded like that was just what he expected and then reached down to shake Norton’s limp hand. He gave it an extra squeeze, a kind of reassurance.

      Katyna plopped down on the couch, ecstatic about being free of the demands of her kids for a few hours. “I love your apartment. It’s outrageously unique, s-s-so much personality. S-s-suburban houses like mine are so sterile.”

      Jane, a mother and grandmother in her fifties, gave Katyna a sympathetic look. “I sure am glad I’m done with all that,” she said. She held up her knitting bag as if to say the day would come when Katyna, too, would be able to enjoy making nice things for her family without having to cook for them every day. She poured herself a glass of wine and then looked from me to Norton. She was always good at picking up on emotions and could tell something was amiss right away. She’d probably suspected long ago that Norton and I were having an affair, but, thank goodness, she wasn’t a gossip.

      Tony trailed the others into the living room. He greeted Norton and me with eyes that melted into grandfatherly