Adrian, who was wearing fluffy pink gloves and a scarf with airplanes on it, sat down on the restaurant steps. ‘Sometimes I wonder if we just ignored them they’d all go away. Like kids with tantrums, you know?’
‘I don’t think that’s how they work.’
The owner of one of the little groceries had come outside and was taping a sign to his window, a piece of cardboard with the printed message PRO-CHOICE, PRO-LIFE, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! DEMONSTRATE AT QUEEN’S PARK AND LEAVE US ALONE! Someone behind the fence started singing ‘Jesus Loves the Little Children,’ and a part of the crowd on Harbord took up the song.
Alex wandered for a while around the edge of the outer ranks, taking some casual shots but seeing nothing that wasn’t a predictable demo picture, so after a few minutes he swung his legs over the barricades and pushed deeper into the crowd. Everyone inside the barricades was chanting or shouting, and taking occasional swings at each other with mittened hands. Alex was shoved from behind and ended up on his knees, but he realized this might be a more interesting angle anyway, so he fired off a series of shots, a baby with a PRO-CHOICE sign pinned to its snowsuit, a man waving a Bible over the heads of the crowd.
‘Brothers and sisters!’ shouted a red-haired woman out the window. ‘All of today’s procedures have been moved to the Scott Clinic. They will see all patients scheduled by us today. If you are waiting for a procedure, please do not stay here, please go to the Scott Clinic. Supporters, I repeat, DO NOT come over the fence!’
Alex pulled himself up on one of the fence pickets, shouldering a space for himself, and stared into the tightly packed mass of people in the yard, who were swaying slightly, struggling for footholds, a flash of pink hair near his shoulder.
‘Hey. Susie-Paul?’
She lifted her head and managed, with some difficulty, to turn in his direction. ‘Oh. Hi there, Alex.’
‘Not the church and not the state!’ shouted someone into his ear.
‘So how’s it going?’
‘Women must control their fate!’
‘I think I have a broken rib,’ said Susie, wrapping her arms around a railing post and biting her lip with the effort of hanging on. ‘Otherwise I’m good. There are people actually underneath my feet, you know.’
‘Jesus loves the little children,’ sang a woman softly, sliding down the steps and vanishing under someone else’s legs. Somewhere up towards the door Alex could see the two policemen who had been caught in the crush elbowing each other and giggling. ‘Wait’ll you tell your wife you spent the whole day pressed up against a bunch of women, eh?’ one of them was saying. Then the radio at his belt crackled into life, and he lifted it, and slowly raised the other hand to his nightstick.
What happened after that was so fast, so unexpected, that Alex didn’t register much of it at the time. He was twisting around by the fence, framing another shot, when he heard sirens, and then half a dozen police cars and a paddy wagon swept around the corner and uniformed men and women leapt out, formed a wedge and slammed into the crowd, pulling the barricades down and tossing them into the road, shouting, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ Alex was knocked off his feet, face down into the pavement, his hands dragging against the snow and gravel as he rolled, blue legs and black boots pounding past him, and they began pulling people over the fence and throwing them onto the sidewalk, forcing their way to the door. He saw a nightstick swing into a man’s head. The man howled, his face ribboned with bright red blood.
‘Clinic volunteer!’ a woman inside the fence was screaming, holding her hands in the air. ‘Clinic volunteer! Don’t hit me!’ Others were shouting now too, clustering into a corner, one woman sobbing. Bodies were flying over the banister, and Alex saw Susie-Paul clinging to the railing, her feet kicking helplessly in the air. The woman who had been singing was lying prone on the stairs, a policeman bending her arms behind her. He realized that there was a rough selection happening, that the clinic volunteers were not being smacked with the nightsticks but herded into the far part of the yard, and they themselves had understood this now too, holding up their hands before the police and shouting, ‘Clinic! Clinic!’ Then a policeman grabbed Susie-Paul by the collar of her coat and yanked her up, half over the banister, and she gave him a wild look and her lips pinched closed and she said nothing, nothing at all. She folded her arms around her body and he lifted his nightstick.
It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, it couldn’t really have been as long as it seemed that she was hanging there in midair; almost immediately, someone else was grabbing her leg and shouting, ‘She’s with us, she’s with the clinic, she’s with the clinic!’ But for a moment Alex didn’t even think; he vaulted over the fence into the yard, half-emptied now, and ran towards her, and as the policeman let her drop he arrived below the stairs and she fell against him. He sat down under the sudden weight, leaning back against the bricks of the building and tightening his arms around her.
‘Oh Christ,’ she said miserably. ‘There was no reason for them to hit people like that, Alex.’ She clenched her fists and leaned into his chest. ‘They shouldn’t fucking hit people like that.’
He tried to catch his breath, thinking suddenly, impossibly, You are mine.
Someone was running up the stairs, unlocking the clinic door, and he heard a siren wind slowly around the corner. He could smell the sharp sweat on her face, feel the feathery edges of her hair. You are mine. He knew it wasn’t true. But he was happy.
Adrian and Chris were coming through the gate. He touched one hand quickly to the back of her neck and let it drop, and then she stood and walked towards Chris. Alex wished that he had seen Chris hesitate for a moment, a flicker of jealousy, but he didn’t. Why should he? Someone should have caught her, and Alex was nearest, it wasn’t a problem. Alex wasn’t a problem.
‘What the hell was that all about?’ said Adrian, staring around the yard at the huddles of confused and trembling volunteers. ‘Did something actually cause that, or did the cops just have some kind of collective brain aneurysm?’
Alex got up, still feeling that strange shimmer of happiness that seemed not to depend on anything real. ‘You’re okay?’
‘I hurt, but I’m okay,’ said Susie-Paul, standing lopsided against Chris’s shoulder. ‘I think everything’s just bruised, not broken.’
‘Maybe it’s legal to blockade a building till one p.m., and then after that it’s a felony? Is that their thinking?’ said Adrian. ‘I mean, I’d just like to know what went on here, because that was fucking weird.’
‘At least they arrested them. Eventually.’
‘Alex, are you all right?’ asked Chris.
‘Yeah,’ said Alex, leaning back against the building, smiling slightly. ‘Yeah, I’m good.’
They walked up Spadina, the four of them, and ate lunch at a greasy spoon on Bloor Street. Then Chris had to meet someone at the paper, and Susie wanted to go home and lie down. Alex walked to the subway station with Susie and Adrian, and as they went inside he turned, and then turned back again.
‘Susie-Paul? Hang on.’
Adrian waved and went through the turnstile, and Susie came back out the glass doors.
‘Can I take your picture?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘If you want.’
So he stepped back and raised the camera, light pouring into the lens, and there was this picture of Susie-Paul, still a bit shaky, quizzical, her features outlined with shadow, her dark eyes on Alex, open. He pressed his finger down and the camera snapped, the last frame on the roll.
‘Okay. That’s good.’
He lowered the camera, and she smiled and shrugged.