On the subway, she made a point of bringing up Fletcher, and there was relief in seeing how the mention of his name made Wale’s eyes lose their gleam. She said that without Fletcher she’d have quit her job already. She said how surprised she’d been to find herself dating him. Teaching had made her such a wreck, she couldn’t imagine being attractive to anybody. But that was the wrong comment to make.
“There’s your problem,” said Wale, the gleam returning. “You don’t see yourself like other people do.” She didn’t know how to respond to that. “For example, the way you listen. Last night you asked me all those questions. Most people don’t bother doing that, especially with a vet. You pay attention, though. It’s a turn-on.”
She wanted to point out that she’d barely asked him anything, and that asking questions didn’t mean she was into him; it only meant she found it easier than talking about herself.
“You know, your dad will probably be okay in Laos,” said Wale out of the blue. It was disconcerting to have the matter raised so unexpectedly, and she had to shunt away a sudden feeling of despair.
“Probably he won’t go,” she said. “He’s never even left the Northeast.”
“If he does, will you join him?”
“Why would I do that?” But as she said it, she knew why she would. Guilt about leaving him had already sent her back to Syracuse summer after summer. How could she let him go to Laos on his own?
“Last night you made it sound like you two are close,” said Wale. “Or you used to be, at least. Maybe you’d want to look out for him.”
Maggie didn’t reply.
“Well, if you do go, tell me,” said Wale. “I might come over and look you up.” He grinned at her, and she decided he was probably insane.
In silence they exited the train and rode the escalator to the surface, Maggie worrying the whole way up that he was going to say something else she’d have to deal with. It was a relief when they reached the cold air outside, but Fletcher was nowhere to be seen.
“He said he’d be here,” she explained, unable to hide her unease, needing to be out of Wale’s company. He seemed to think she was only concerned about Fletcher’s welfare.
“You’re really stuck on this guy. It’s not for his money, is it?”
Even though he said it jokingly, Maggie scowled. She often worried about the Morgan family’s wealth, not because people like Wale would think she was a gold digger, but because her father might feel self-conscious about his own money problems.
It was only another minute before Fletcher arrived. He seemed taken aback to see Wale with her, and she found herself saying that the two of them had run into each other on the subway. Wale winked at her, and immediately she regretted the lie. As he said goodbye and started away from them, she could imagine him growing ever bolder with her, not caring what Brid or Fletcher thought, until there was some confrontation and Maggie got blamed. The next time she and Fletcher met up with Brid, though, Wale wasn’t there. He’d re-enlisted and shipped out to Vietnam, beating her father to Indochina by a good four months.
Between the hours of gardening, cleaning, and making dinners, Maggie retreats to her camera. She films George Ray atop a ladder as he tends the trees, a transistor radio in his shirt pocket piping music to him through an earphone. She captures Fletcher and Wale on the farmhouse roof with their hammers flashing. From the creek bank a mile downstream, she films them and Brid swimming in a shady pool beneath an old concrete dam, while water passes over the edge in a smooth, clear stream and an empty bird’s nest bobs in an eddy. Across the road, the church’s steeple pokes up from the horizon, scratching a human presence into the sky. Pauline sits cross-legged on the bank in her pink swimsuit, collecting pebbles for a tiny, slowly growing cairn.
By now Maggie has recognized that when the others are conscious of the camera, they each have their reactions. For Brid, to be filmed is an affront, as though someone has called her a dirty name. Wale tries to escape, so that often there are only blurred glimpses of him quickening away like a sasquatch. George Ray is almost as elusive, cloistered in the barracks when he isn’t working. Those times she does catch him out, he acts embarrassed. By contrast, Pauline squirms her way into every shot she can, dancing and hamming. A camera appears and the world rearranges itself in response. Fletcher alone changes not a bit, as if he’s been exposed to cameras all his life.
With each person, it’s the private moments Maggie’s after. She doesn’t want self-consciousness; she doesn’t want performance. In daydreams she imagines aerial shots that would let her study everyone at her leisure, unobserved, but in practice she’s limited to filming from ground level, so she stays on the periphery and wills herself to be part of the landscape, carrying the camera even when it’s turned off, hoping others will become less sensitive to its presence.
It would be easier to blend into the scene if more people were around, but no one else arrives. Even Frank and the girls next door remain absent from the lawn in front of the mobile home when Maggie walks by. As the middle of July approaches, Fletcher’s optimism about the farm starts to dwindle.
“A hundred thousand draft dodgers in this country and we can’t get one of them,” he complains. He stays up late watching television, feet on the coffee table, pulling at his moustache while twin quadrilaterals of light reflect in his eyeglasses. He has never drunk much beer, alcohol being long shunned by his family, but now as he watches he always has a bottle in hand. When the Democratic convention begins, he takes up near-permanent residence in the living room, and no one bothers to chastise him for not working. At the dinner table he speaks less often about his plans for Harroway and more about the failings of the party leadership. On the convention’s last night, they all sit together to watch McGovern take the nomination. By the time Eagleton’s declared the running mate, though, Brid and Wale have given up and gone to bed.
“I still can’t believe Ted Kennedy refused to stand,” says Fletcher. Maggie knows that he and his father once went fishing with Ted Kennedy.
It’s almost three in the morning when McGovern makes his acceptance speech. Maggie’s lying with her head against Fletcher’s thigh, wanting to luxuriate in this propinquity, the stillness of the night, everyone else asleep and his hands resting in her hair, but she can’t get comfortable. There’s a tautness in his muscles; the speech has got his attention. She hasn’t even been listening, but now she tries to focus on the words. Through the stupor of her tiredness she sees McGovern as a mass of light distinguishable only by eyebrows and sideburns. Then a phrase hooks her.
“From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America.” Her heart begins to thud. “From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation,” McGovern says, “come home, America.” She glances at Fletcher, but his face is unreadable. “Come home, America. Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream.”
Gently, Fletcher lifts her head from against his leg, and she thinks he’s going to kiss her, but instead he gets up and turns off the television, then says he’s going to bed.
Upstairs in the dark, she lays her arm across his chest.
“You know, we can go back if you want,” he says.
For a while she doesn’t answer.
“Do you want to?” she asks.
“No, I don’t.”
“I’m happy here,” she tells him.
“That’s good,” he replies, kissing her on the eyelids. “I am too.”