Summer People

by Marge Piercy

  When Jimmy walked in around two, he seemed almost startled to see her, although she could not imagine why. It was as if he had forgotten she might be there; or forgotten she existed. Why wasn’t she more memorable? It seemed to her she ought to be a much more romantic and sought after woman than any man had yet judged her to be. After all, she was thin, blonde, young, reasonably well off and an artist, even if unrecognized. Yet life was always casting her in bit roles, backup, also-ran; even her own husband had kept a private life to himself.

  Jimmy made a rapid recovery. Tossing his jacket on a chair, he rolled up the sleeves of his chambray shirt. ‘Let’s start with the hardest part. Otherwise that will be hanging over you.’

  Together they climbed the stairs, Jimmy just behind her. The room felt smaller and drabber to her than she remembered it. ‘Celeste was supposed to get rid of his clothes, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to look.’

  ‘That’s the only closet?’

  ‘His half was the right. I was on the left. Then there’s a closet downstairs beside the bath. And the coat closet in the foyer.’

  Jimmy reported that the closet upstairs was cleaned out, as was Tom’s chest of drawers, but downstairs, Celeste had missed his gear in both closets. Together they stuffed it into large plastic bags.

  ‘Oh, I forgot. If there’s anything of his you want …’

  ‘Is there anything of his you want me to have?’

  She thought about that. ‘No. I don’t want ever to see his overcoat or his leather jacket or his Aquascutum again.’

  ‘Then let’s chuck it all.’

  The phone rang. She cringed. ‘Unless it’s Daddy I don’t want to talk to anyone.’

  But the voice speaking out of the answering machine was female and asking for Jimmy. ‘Darling, I was out of town. But I got your message and here I am, dying to see you. Do get back to me. How long are you here? It’s Kiki and you have my number …’

  ‘Kiki?’ Laurie repeated, mistrusting her hearing. ‘That sounded a lot like the Cathy Porter I went to school with.’

  ‘She’s kind of a model.’ He did not elaborate. Nor did he pick up the phone.

  ‘But isn’t that Cathy Porter? Her father’s a lawyer, a good one. Daddy uses him. Her mother’s a Morgan. She came out with her father to visit us a few times on the Cape.’

  ‘She doesn’t get on too well with her parents,’ Jimmy said reluctantly.

  ‘Is she an old girlfriend?’ Cathy had certainly sounded that way on the answering machine, but when and how could Jimmy have had any romantic contact with one of the Porters? Cathy had never been all that friendly to Laurie, always condescending.

  ‘Barely. I was hoping to borrow some operating expenses from her.’

  ‘Oh. I could front you some money if you need it.’ She thought she sounded very knowing, very cool. ‘After all, Daddy will be paying you soon. You could get an advance from him. For supplies.’

  ‘Willie’s handling the negotiations. He gave me strict orders to keep out.’ Jimmy sketched a line in the air.

  She had a sudden intense curiosity about how Willie compared as a father with Tyrone, but she could not think how to ask Jimmy. The packing went quickly. Basically she had to divide up the things she wanted to toss, what she wanted in storage and what she needed during the next six months on the Cape. Jimmy offered to get rid of Tom’s stuff, which he carried out in bags. He was gone for two hours. She did not ask him how he had disposed of the clothing and personal effects, appreciating his tact in not volunteering to tell her when at last he returned, his hair slicked down with melting snow.

  They were packing up her drawings. She did not trust anybody else to handle them. ‘I suppose you think I’m some kind of idiot, I could live with a coke addict and not even know it. I just thought he was irritable and had sinus problems.’

  Jimmy put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. ‘No, and I don’t feel superior, because I’ve been an equal idiot. Jackie was cooking the books for months, skimming our profits off, and I never suspected a thing.’

  ‘But she was just a business partner. Tom was my husband!’

  ‘Yeah, well. Jackie wasn’t just my partner either. I mean, we were good friends … In fact, we were involved.’

  ‘You were having an affair with her?’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly an affair, you know? Jackie was lonely, we were all putting long hours into the business. She needed a little love. That was all. I kept telling her she needed a real boyfriend, one of her own, but since Lisa didn’t want to make love every day, what difference did it make?’

  ‘But … how could you lie to Lisa?’

  ‘I didn’t lie to her. I wouldn’t do that. It never came up – that is, until after it ended. I mean, when Lisa got pregnant, I stopped with Jackie because it didn’t seem kind. Then Jackie told Lisa and Lisa threw me out. It wasn’t fair because I hadn’t made love with Jackie for two months.’

  ‘But how could you have imagined it wouldn’t all come out?’

  ‘I was stupid.’ He smiled. ‘I like this drawing. The pregnant nude. It’s strong.’

  ‘That’s my best drawing from when I was in school … But how could you do that?’ She was more fascinated than offended. She tried to imagine herself behaving that way, but failed. ‘Maybe because you grew up with Dinah, with such an unusual family situation.’

  ‘It just seemed an easy way to grease the wheels. Jackie was lonely, Lisa didn’t need me all the time. We were all putting extra long hours into the restaurant. Lisa went in early, Jackie and I closed it up. Now they’re both furious at me.’ He shook his head slowly, looking past her at the wall. ‘And I feel as if I fucked up something that was really good because I have this dumb ass compulsion to please everybody, without thinking about the consequences and how it’s all going to work out in the long run. I’m just forever thinking I can improvise and muddle through. I need to learn what I break can’t always be fixed and I can’t just make it better with a couple of jokes and a big smile.’

  She realised he was deeply judgemental, angry with himself behind the casual and amiable façade he presented. She felt she understood him better. And liked him better. ‘You know what frightens me? I can’t remember loving Tom. I can’t remember loving him and wanting to marry him. I only remember finding him. I feel as if I’ve lost everything, and it never really existed.’

  ‘It’ll come back,’ he said confidently. ‘Not dramatically but a little at a time. Wait and see. Easy to say, but you can’t do anything else.’

  ‘You’re being an enormous help to me. I never expected that.’

  He grinned. ‘I think we’re both desperately in need of a friend – somebody we can talk to truthfully about ourselves. No façade. No lies. No worrying about appearances.’

  ‘When I see old friends or acquaintances, I’m ashamed.’

  ‘We’re both convalescents,’ he said. ‘Cracked eggs trying to hatch.’

  She laughed. It was a gruesome image but one that seemed right at least for her. ‘We should get the Voice and do something nice tonight. A treat. We deserve it.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, nodding. ‘Step one.’ A moment later, standing at the window, he whistled. ‘Scrap that plan. It’s snowing as if the sky’s ripped open. Actually I noticed headlines about a storm. Maybe we better turn on the radio and find out what’s happening. You might want to head for Tyrone’s while you still have a chance of arriving.’

  Already an inch of slush lay in the streets and the other side of the street was barely visible. Quickly she gathered up her things and prepared to flee. When she finally was sitting in a cab, she wondered to herself if now he would call Cathy Porter back.

  Chapter Thirteen

  DINAH

  Dinah woke to Figaro’s baleful glare and his weight on her chest as he hunched there waiting for her to get up and feed him. The room was dark but she had obviously overslept. No comforting greenish glow came from the clock radio that Willie had given her three Christ
mases ago, a KLH with terrific sound and an external speaker. The lamp beside the bed would not turn on and the air was crisp. The house was not quiet, however, as it often was with the power out, because the wind was shaking it, tearing at the old shingles on the roof, buffeting the pond side. The wind was driving the snow so hard against the eastern windows that she could hear it scratching the glass.

  She did not feel like rising. With the furnace out, the house would be cold and damp. She would be entirely dependent on the ineffective fireplace and the tiny stove in the kitchen Willie had installed for just such times; she could not bathe or flush the toilet, for her pump would be off. It would be dark and boring. Tosca showed no desire whatsoever to budge, but dug her claws into Dinah’s flannel nightgown to hold her in bed.

  The winds were extremely high, gale force her battery operated radio tuned to the weather station informed her. They were predicting at least a foot of snow for the Cape and Islands. The melancholy postscript to the marine forecast was a fishing vessel lost out of Provincetown – caught in the violent onslaught of the storm, perhaps with engine trouble, trying to bring their catch in. She recognized the name of the ship, for one of the crew had been with the Captain, before he had lost his boat to the IRS.

  She couldn’t grind coffee beans, but she had a can of espresso for just such emergencies, along with a couple of gallons of bottled water. Her propane gas stove worked. She puttered about feeding the cats. For once Figaro did not ask to go out. The storm impressed him, crouched on the window ledge watching it swirl past until a falling limb from a pine thumping the roof sent him under the couch. There was a certain rugged cosiness in making do, in carrying out the tasks the lack of power made suddenly arduous.

  She had never been good at laying fires, but she finally got one going in the fireplace and one in the wood stove. Tosca claimed the spot between the stove and the wall to bake herself. Dinah gave herself a fast cat cleaning with a wet washing, standing in front of the stove. Then she got her flute and her score and settled down to work, not in her usual spot in the livingroom by the windows on the pond but in the kitchen, where life would be carried on as long as the power was out. Because the kitchen was dim, she lit a kerosene lantern. Lanterns made her nervous. They seemed so easy to tip and break, spilling fire – Mrs O’Leary’s cow from grade school history.

  She worked raggedly, just polishing what she had been doing the week before, not able to achieve the deep concentration she usually took for granted. The storm intruded. Never did she feel so at sea, so aware of being on a narrow strip of sand miles out in the ocean as during a storm. The world was gone except for the jaws that held and worried them. She decided to call Willie and Susan. It felt absurd to use the phone, but at least that did seem to be working. Maybe. She got a busy signal. To see if the phone was still functioning, she tried the library, then realized it was closed. Instead she called Burt, the librarian. He answered in a sleepy voice.

  ‘Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I don’t have anything urgent to say.’

  ‘It’s so cold in here, we went back to bed. We dug the car out and then realized the road’s impassable and if we did go to town, we’d never get back. We’d given up for the duration.’

  ‘That sounds like the most intelligent response.’

  She stood at the kitchen window with the receiver in her hand. Still busy. She could not see the new house. Willie and Susan might have vanished. She was dependent on looking out the window at them a dozen times a morning. She read the chronicle of their activities in signs of woodsmoke, curtains drawn or opened, the thuck, thuck of axe on wood. It was a lazy way of maintaining contact while she worked, keeping her in touch without interrupting her concentration. Now the white wall of the storm stood between them.

  The phone rang. She jumped on it, absurdly relieved. It would be Susan, with the same impulse that had led her to call them. ‘Hello, am I speaking to Dinah Adler?’

  ‘You are. Who’s this?’ She did not recognize the man’s voice.

  ‘Itzak Raab. I thought I should make contact. I’m delighted that the grant came through. I’m looking forward to playing your piece. I remember your quilt piece I heard at Aspen.’

  She felt like laughing for the absurdity of it, because it was hard to believe there was still a house forty feet away, let alone a world importantly humming with electricity off Cape. ‘I’m excited about the suite. In fact I’m working on it already. It would be kind of helpful if we could talk at some point about what I have in mind. I’m calling it The Cat in the Moon.’

  ‘Let’s see. I’ll be in Boston March nineteenth with the BSO. Can you get in? How far away are you?’ The voice was deep, rough and spiky, neutral in its accent. It didn’t offer any information about origins, being neither particularly eastern or midwestern, not southern or New York, not European certainly. Bland in its accent as a radio announcer, but that rough voice didn’t match. Nita had sent her a clipping from People followed by another brief mention in Vogue. Young, divorced, recently returned from many years abroad, Raab was getting big attention on the concert circuit.

  ‘Today, years away. If there isn’t a storm, I can make it in about two and a half hours by car. Where do you stay?’

  ‘The Copley Plaza. How about breakfast or lunch on the twentieth? Breakfast would give us more time. I have a two-thirty flight out.’

  ‘Let’s say ten.’

  ‘If you’d like, I can send you tickets for the concert on the nineteenth.’

  ‘I’d love that.’ She could stay with Nita, who would be playing.

  After she had returned the phone to its cradle, she shook her head as if throwing off water. Would she really meet that voice at ten a.m. on the twentieth of March in a Boston hotel? She hadn’t even asked him for his home number or his agent’s, to get in touch. She was an idiot. It felt more and more unlikely. After Juilliard she had heard him once in concert, playing the Khachaturian with the Pittsburgh, and once at Aspen where they both had gigs, doing the Telemann C minor Sonata. Then he had gone off to Europe and based himself out of London for years. Only recently had he returned to the States with a large European reputation and that certain glamour required to make it with booking agents. She had some of his records, but she had not heard him live in over a decade. If she had had power, she would have put on the compact disc of his Mozart flute and harp, to make him more real to her.

  She felt torn. She was eager to meet someone who played the flute that well. Moreover she wished to please with her work, to mesh with what he would be comfortable performing. Still she feared that any popular performer would try to tone down her work; his early feedback could be dangerous. She wished that the phone had been out, that she had thought of an excuse and begged off, that she had had at least the sense to provide herself with a contact number so that she could pretend to have the flu and cancel.

  By one o’clock the snow was slowing; most likely, the eye of the storm was passing over. In a storm of this scope, a hurricane of snow, often a pause interrupted the blizzard before the winds could swing around from the other direction. She could see the new house now, huddled under a thick roof of white. How beautiful the trees were, branches bowed to the ground. Everything was made new and strange. She bundled up, hating the preparation it took to walk forty feet, but needing to see Susan and Willie and needing too to share her confusion from the call. When she opened her door, snow piled against it fell into the kitchen. Then she could barely push the door shut from the outside. Besides, she had felt cheated when she had told Susan about the commission, for her thunder had been stolen by Tyrone’s arrival, and Susan had not fussed her up the way only Susan could. Telling Susan about the call was giving her a second chance to celebrate and enjoy.

  One of the pitch pines on the shore had fallen, uprooted by the gale with its root ball sticking black and hairy out of a drift. A grey birch was broken halfway up and hung, maimed. Her rhododendrons had taken a beating. Large leathery leaves were strewn over the snow.

&
nbsp; It was absurd, an arctic trek in drifts over her boot tops where snow had piled up, barely four inches deep where the wind had scoured it off the rises. She lumbered along, then came into an area where Willie had shovelled a path, now half filled, toward the woodpile and his studio. She headed first for the house. Walking was easy in the rut of path.

  ‘Susan? Susan! Willie?’

  Their house was not as cold as hers, because Willie liked wood stoves and the one in the livingroom was big enough to heat the downstairs, with help from the gas oven that was lit. But there was no one in the house except Bogey, who bounded to meet her barking frantically.

  Willie was in his studio squatting on the floor staring at a recent structure, a sort of igloo of bones hung with bits of cloth. She fell in and took off her boots before coming closer. Willie had a pair of tinsnips in his hand, and he was looking discontented. In fact he was glaring at his piece.

  ‘What’s wrong, love?’

  ‘Do you think I’m repeating myself?’

  Some idiot in a review had said that. ‘They just mean your work looks as if you did it. What are you supposed to do, change your line every year like a fashion designer?’

  ‘Susan says I’m in a rut.’

  ‘You’re always in rut, Willie bear, which is one reason I love you. But no, I don’t think you’re stuck. What brought this on?’

  ‘Susan thinks I don’t see enough shows.’

  ‘She’s pissed neither of us wanted to go to New York with Laurie and Jimmy. Have you had lunch? Doing everything is so much work, why don’t we all sit down and eat lunch together for once.’

  Willie looked around vaguely at his digital clock, which was blank. ‘I’m hungry. It must be past lunchtime.’

  ‘It’s almost two.’

  ‘I thought Susan would be back by now –’

  ‘Back? From where?’

  ‘When it started to let up, she drove over to Tyrone’s.’

  ‘My god, why? Are you both crazy?’