I am running away to realize my full potential. I know you have always said I could do anything I want but what you meant was, I could do anything as long as it didn't mess you up, which is not exactly the same thing now, is it? Don't bother to look for me.
No longer yours,
Lory.
Then she went to join the women in the hills.
I would like to go, Suellen thought, but what if they wouldn't let me have my baby?
Jolene's uncle in the country always had a liver-colored setter named Fido. The name remained the same and the dogs were more or less interchangeable. Jolene called all her lovers Mike, and because they were more or less interchangeable, eventually she tired of them and went to join the women in the hills.
"You're not going," Herb Chandler said. Annie said, "I am."
He grabbed her as she reached the door. "The hell you are, I need you."
"You don't need me, you need a maid." She slapped the side of his head. "Now let me go."
"You're mine," he said, aiming a karate chop at her neck. She wriggled and he missed.
"Just like your ox and your ass, huh." She had gotten hold of a lamp and she let him have it on top of the head.
"Ow," he said, and crumpled to the floor.
"Nobody owns me," she said, throwing the vase of flowers she kept on the side table, just for good measure. "I'll be back when it's over." Stepping over him, she went out the door.
After everybody left that morning, June mooned around the living room, picking up the scattered newspapers, collecting her and Vic's empty coffee cups and marching out to face the kitchen table, which looked the same way every morning at this time, glossy with spilled milk and clotted cereal, which meant that she had to go through the same motions every morning at this time, feeling more and more like that jerk, whatever his name was, who for eternity kept on pushing the same recalcitrant stone up the hill; he was never going to get it to the top because it kept falling back on him and she was never going to get to the top, wherever that was, because there would always be the kitchen table, and the wash, and the crumbs on the rug, and besides she didn't know where the top was because she had gotten married right after Sweetbriar and the next minute, bang, there was the kitchen table and, give or take a few babies, give or take a few stabs at night classes in something or other, that seemed to be her life. There it was in the morning, there it was again at noon, there it was at night; when people said, at parties, "What do you do?" she could only move her hands helplessly because there was no answer she could give that would please either herself or them. I clean the kitchen table, she thought, because there was no other way to describe it. Occasionally she thought about running away, but where would she go, and how would she live? Besides, she would miss Vic and the kids and her favorite chair in the television room. Sometimes she thought she might grab the milkman or the next delivery boy, but she knew she would be too embarrassed, either that or she would start laughing, or the delivery boy would, and even if they didn't, she would never be able to face Vic. She thought she had begun to disappear, like the television or the washing machine; after a while nobody would see her at all. They might complain if she wasn't working properly, but in the main she was just another household appliance, and so she mooned, wondering if this was all there was ever going to be: herself in the house, the kitchen table.
Then the notice came.
JOIN NOW
It was in the morning mail, hastily mimeographed and addressed to her by name. If she had been in a different mood she might have tossed it out with the rest of the junk mail, or called a few of her friends to see if they had gotten it too. As it was, she read it through, chewing over certain catchy phrases in this call to arms, surprised to find her blood quickening. Then she packed and wrote her note:
Dear Vic,
There are clean sheets on all the beds and three casseroles in the freezer and one in the oven. The veal one should do for two meals. I have done all the wash and a thorough vacuuming. If Sandy's cough doesn't get any better you should take him in to see Dr. Weixelbaum, and don't forget Jimmy is supposed to have his braces tightened on the 12th. Don't look for me.
Love, June
Then she went to join the women in the hills.
Glenda Thompson taught psychology at the university; it was the semester break and she thought she might go to the women's encampment in an open spirit of inquiry. If she liked what they were doing she might chuck Richard, who was only an instructor while she was an assistant professor, and join them. To keep the appearance of objectivity, she would take notes.
Of course she was going to have to figure out what to do with the children while she was gone. No matter how many hours she and Richard taught, the children were her responsibility, and if they were both working in the house, she had to leave her typewriter and shush the children because of the way Richard got when he was disturbed. None of the sitters she called could come; Mrs. Birdsall, their regular sitter, had taken off without notice again, to see her son the freshman in Miami, and she exhausted the list of student sitters without any luck. She thought briefly of leaving them at Richard's office, but she couldn't trust him to remember them at the end of the day. She reflected bitterly that men who wanted to work just got up and went to the office. It had never seemed fair.
"Oh hell," she said finally, and because it was easier, she packed Tommy and Bobby and took them along.
Marva and Patsy and Betts were sitting around in Marva's room; it was two days before the junior prom and not one of them had a date, or even a nibble; there weren't even any blind dates to be had.
"I know what let's do," Marva said, "let's go up to Ferguson's and join the women's army."
Betts said, "I didn't know they had an army!"
"Nobody knows what they have up there," Patsy said.
They left a note so Marva's mother would be sure and call them in case somebody asked for a date at the last minute and they got invited to the prom after all.
Sally felt a twinge of guilt when she opened the flier:
JOIN NOW
After she read it she went to the window and looked at the smoke column in open disappointment: Oh, so that's all it is. Yearning after it in the early autumn twilight, she had thought it might represent something more: excitement, escape, but she supposed she should have guessed. There was no great getaway, just a bunch of people who needed more people to help. She knew she probably ought to go up and help but for a while, she could design posters and ads they could never afford if they went to a regular graphics studio. Still, all those women . . . She couldn't bring herself to make the first move.
"I'm not a joiner," she said aloud, but that wasn't really it; she had always worked at home, her studio took up one wing of the house and she made her own hours; when she tired of working she could pick at the breakfast dishes or take a nap on the lumpy couch at one end of the studio; when the kids came home she was always there and besides, she didn't like going places without Zack.
Instead she used the flier to test her colors, dabbing blues here, greens there, until she had more or less forgotten the message and all the mimeographing was obscured by color.
At the camp, Dr. Ora Fessenden was leading an indoctrination program for new recruits. She herself was in the stirrups, lecturing coolly while everybody filed by.
One little girl, lifted up by her mother, began to whisper: "Ashphasphazzzzz-pzz."
The mother muttered, "Mumumumummmmmmm. . . ."
Ellen Ferguson, who was holding the light, turned it on the child for a moment. "Well, what does she want?"