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a hundred quid,” she exclaimed. Her father nodded, threateningly, generously—she couldn’t distinguish anymore. They each laughed it off rather too loudly. He complained that she always knew more about what she didn’t want than what she did want.
    Not true. She knew she wanted to go to America. It would be different when she got to America. She didn’t know what started this “Yankophilia” as she called it. Maybe it began in University when she met all those kids from L.A. She liked the offhand way they referred to “school” rather than university, the way they called professors by their first names and the way they called lecturers “professors.” They had turned her on to grass (much more sensible than lager, not as fattening and no hangover) and to their music. Funky rock. There was something so down-to-earth (now, that had to be an American term) and honest about their music. It wasn’t like that cerebral Pink Floyd nonsense. She loved denim. So unpretentious, like everything American.
    Originally, she had planned to leave in September. But Diane’s husband left her. The poor girl was at the end of her tether. So she gave Diane a few quid and a little time. Diane would need company for a couple of months at least.
    She looked forward to airletters from her friends in West Virginia (“Did you catch Deliverance? Have you heard the music, seen the quilts?”); and friends in Washington D.C. (Fred was a Nader’s Raider in the nerve center of American corruption); and her old beau in Bellingham (Those photos of mountain goats in the Olympic range were tacked around the ancient victrola in her bedsit).
    She painted on weekends and was rather proud of a couple of watercolors that she gave her parents for Easter. However, she knew she wouldn’t really get into her art until America. So much to paint there. Mary told her they would take a caravan—no, it was called a trailer—through the Grand Canyon and up the California coast to visit Len. Then she would find the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Dells in Wisconsin and the Fall in New England and the green fields of Mississippi. She consumed travel books, started reading regional fiction and fell in love with William Faulkner.
    Meanwhile, another six months passed as she worked in the Engineering Library, cataloguing journal articles. A tedious job, yes Mother, beneath her talents. But it allowed time to think, to plan. Somehow she had made herself indispensable. It was a curious circle: the harder she worked to make money for the trip, the more difficult it was to get away for things like a visa and tickets.
    She almost made the plane reservation the morning she heard that radio program about the common stinkweed. The Common Stinkweed. Bloody English even made class distinctions about plants. As if people had the leisure to be botanized at eight in the morning. The BBC’s mentality was absolutely stifling.
    The news wasn’t any better. So lethargic. So sober. Almost as if the broadcasts were conjured to reassure. She could never understand her parents’ commitment to Britain, their unflagging patriotism and their maudlin memories about “finest hours.” As far as she could tell, even the War had been distilled and produced by the BBC.
    Well, she couldn’t really leave before Christmas, could she? Mother would be too disappointed. It was bad enough to be going away for a year. Actually, it might be longer, but she wasn’t going to upset them until she knew definitely. She decided she shouldn’t go before January. That was a proper time for a fresh start. Then it would all be different, in America.

III
    In the Company of
Long-Distance
Peace Marchers
    They said it would be the last peace march. Peace was at hand. The treaty would be signed that week. Susan marched because she believed—in her most optimistic soul— that it was the last peace march. She marched