Let's Go Play at the Adams'

in Europe; and then there was "The Star-Spangled Banner'' and, at last, only a gritty,

staticky, blue-white buzz. Cindy, Barbara supposed, had long since gone to sleep, likely as

not on the rug. Bobby was still absent-probably asleep in his room-and Barbara was truly

alone.

Now was the time for the heroics and daring of fiction. A subtle flick of her fingers and a

hidden razor blade would suddenly appear; snick, slash, and she would be free.

Unfortunately, of course, it was only on the tube that such things happened. Now, here, in

life, victims remained pretty much what they had been before-victims.

·

The callousness with which the children were able to leave her thus-save making it worse

by guarding, of course-was astonishing to Barbara. They seemed to have no ability or

desire to project themselves into her situation or imagine how much she hurt. They had no

gods---or, if they did, they weren't charitable and loving gods-and they had no heroes

unless the name Freedom Five implied that guerrilla fighters had some hold on

imagination. They just went along. Like Cindy, they all just sort of went along buoyed up by

their automatic, thermostatically controlled, smoothly

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running house machines and credit cards and charge accounts. Adults weren't really

needed or heeded at all.

Oh, stop that, Barbara said, frightened. You're going off the wall. It -isn't that way at all.

Oh, yes, it is. Why not? 0 god. She strained not to strain at her ropes; that would only hurt

more. Lie still.

I'm trying. I'm trying.

If she could momentarily will her body to quietude, however, Barbara could not silence her

mind. As an Ed major, her young head was full of everything from Group Needs and

Interaction down to Gestalt Psychology (a lot of it, undigested) . Her head-in enforced

solitariness, would spin on-would keep her awake. If I could only make something out of all

of this, Barbara said. Instead a tune came to mind; it emerged out of "The Happy Farmer."

School-days, school-days, Dear old golden rule days,

Reading and writing and 'rithmetic, Taught to the tune of a hick'ry stick ....

Stop it, Barbara said again. I want to think. And she did, but the silly music went on and

transposed itself into:

The automatic children and the prophylactic pup

Were playing in the garden when the bunny gamboled

up

No, I do want to think!

It was no use, thinking had gone. Barbara hurt and ached now: at her best, possibly, she

could not have pursued the matter. It wasn't her sort of thing, not like it was Terry's.

Terry could settle down, not mannishly of course, but settle down with a relaxed attitude

that at least indicated the absence of body concerns from mind. Chin on left palm, right

hand scribbling notes in swift, efficient shorthand, she exuded concentration, isolation. A

wall existed around her. At the other end of the room

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by contrast, Barbara sat twisted and twined around her chair like a vine. Her legs were

crossed and recrossed, foot hooked behind ankle. Her hands willfully played with things on

her desk. She brushed her hair out of her eyes three times a minute, it seemed like. She

looked at words and understood them and then forgot them the moment she passed to the

next paragraph. She could not structure and comprehend wholes. Movement, pleasure,

warm and direct human contact and joy were her world, not this one of contemplation. At

times of absolutely forced study--exams, term paper deadlines-she even had the notion to

speak out, yell, dance, sing, throw something to break the holy quiet. "What's the use,

Terry? I mean, really like what's the use? How can you just sit there and grind like that?

What's the difference between us?"

Snagged, touched by a memory, Barbara drifted, recalled clearly, saw their room in the

dormitory with Terry studying that way, Terry dressing, Terry doing her small wash. Terry

moving in and out with her selfpossessed assurance. It was so momentarily vivid that there

even seemed to be a faint superimposition of this room at the Adams' upon the old one at

the university, Barbara lying in the one bed here, then a curious light/time effect, and

finally Terry moving about on the other side of her bed in their room not ten feet away.

What if it was really like that and not simply imagined? The daydream begun and

interrupted this morning, began again.

"Terry?"

"Terr-ee-e-e ... T" Terry said.

"They didn't let me go," Barbara said unnecessarily.

Terry said nothing.

"I don't think they're going to let me go until they have to."

"Maybe not." Terry was beginning to get ready for bed herself. She was a plain, not to say

an awkward looking girl, but she bad beautiful copper-colored hair

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