Any Minute I Can Split by Judith Rossner Page A

“I just . . .” She was on the verge of tears, for crying out loud. She smiled. “You sound as if you hate everybody, so why not me?”
    â€œHate?” Starr looked genuinely puzzled. “I don’t hate anybody. You mean Carol? I LOVE Carol, Carol’s my soul sister.”
    Paul laughed. “It’s like my mother’s old joke,” he said. “With that for a friend you don’t need an enemy.”
    â€œFuck your mother,” Starr said.
    Paul laughed again. “Right on.”
    â€œI’d think that by now,” De Witt spoke from his corner for the first time, “a lot of the free schools would be in full swing.”
    â€œSo?” Starr said.
    â€œSo I was just thinking,” De Witt continued, “that maybe when the roads are cleared a couple of people might want to take off and look at a few of them, get some idea of how they’re run, and so on.”
    â€œDe Witt,” Carol said, “I love you.”
    â€œWhat about the kids?” Starr asked suspiciously. “Would we have to take the kids?”
    â€œI don’t see why you should,” De Witt said, “unless the others . . .”
    Margaret and Butterscotch said it was fine with them if the kids stayed. Mira, her eyes closed as she sat in the rocking chair, said nothing.
    â€œHow about you, Mira?” Starr asked.
    Mira opened her eyes. Starr explained the question again, as though to a deaf person. Mira said she thought by all means the children should stay.
    â€œFine,” De Witt said, “I’ll find out what steps we have to take to make a school legal.”
    T HE younger group came back from Canada. Butterscotch was pleased to see them and baked a cake to celebrate their return; they treated her with friendly condescension, someone fit to keep the home fires burningwhile they manned the barricades. They looked very much alike, the four boys and two girls. All around twenty years old, uniformly tall, handsome, healthy looking. David displayed no interest in any of them, although they were so close to his own age; when she questioned him, he said he wasn’t into their phony revolution bag. She asked whether it might not be better to be in a phony bag than in no bag at all and he stomped out of the room, brushing shoulders with one of them as he went. They seemed not to notice him or anyone else as they trooped toward the kitchen for a meal, ignoring Mira’s gentle protests that lunch wasn’t ready yet.
    â€œDo they talk to anyone?” Margaret asked De Witt.
    â€œNot much,” De Witt said. “They’re suspicious of us. They feel the odds are that at least one of us is CIA, probably me.”
    â€œDoesn’t that bother you?”
    He shrugged. “In the long run it doesn’t matter. Trust can change, too.”
    â€œWhy would the CIA bother with this place?”
    De Witt smiled. “I can’t think of any good reason, but maybe the CIA can.”
    I T kept snowing. Carol and Starr got tired of waiting for it to clear and took off in Carol’s Volks after De Witt had plowed the dirt road for them.
    Rosemary was sleeping through every night and Rue was just waking up once for a feeding and then going back. Margaret gave a lot of attention to Starr’s and Carol’s kids, none of whom seemed to mind in the least that their mothers were gone.
    She began doing yoga exercises every morning with Dolores and Mira.
    The younger group built an igloo in the woods beyond the farm. “They’re on a survival trip,” Butterscotch explained. They slept in it for two nights and then decided to spend the winter with some friends in the movement in Key West.
    When she thought about Roger it was most often to wonder idly who he was screwing, or how many at a time. Occasionally she questioned the nature of their relationship: whether it was more good than bad (probably not); whether there were reasons