Summer People

by Marge Piercy

  ‘I’m so crazy about coffee I only drink espresso from Italian roast beans from a particular store in the North End. I come in and get them every six weeks or so and freeze the beans till I grind them.’ She felt the chill of depression, as if she had opened a heavy door and a cold wind blew in with the smell of decay. That was what they had used to do, all three of them. If he had changed the subject quickly from his parents, she would like to get it off coffee, fast. ‘I feel like some ridiculous dinosaur that has overspecialized and eats only one fruit about to become extinct.’

  She had arrived here nervous and defensive. It had taken them an hour to open up. She had been worried he would try to interfere with what she was writing; he perhaps had been afraid that being a woman she would be incompetent. Then they had had a productive hour looking at the score and discussing it. He had made some useful suggestions. Some she could apply and some she explained her difficulties with. It was a good interaction.

  ‘Twice you said you’ve never performed music composed by a woman. Does that bother you?’

  ‘No, but I’m conscious of it. I guess I want to see if it feels different. I don’t think I’m closed to the idea or scared. But it’s interesting. People must have always been telling you no woman has written great music.’

  ‘That’s what they tell me.’ Another corn trodden on, hard. That’s what she had been taught at Juilliard, that’s what she had been told again and again. In 1976 there had been a spate of women’s music programmes, when her work had been performed, on the radio, at festivals. Special women’s programming, so that all those worthy institutions could say, Oh we did that last year, and go on ignoring her work for another decade.

  He ordered up lunch, explaining there were no restaurants in the hotel with nonsmoking sections and he could not take a chance on tour of getting clogged up. Planes were bad enough. ‘To keep my sinuses clear, I sit there squirting myself in the face with water. I don’t get any of the spray anywhere but on me, but I’ve had people move away. They think I’m crazy.’

  At one point she had thought he was about to make a pass, but then she decided he simply had an ebullient manner. Then she decided he was gay. Then she decided he might not be. Then she decided she had no idea. She had been out of circulation so long, she was unpractised at deciphering male behaviour. She couldn’t read signals. She was worse than a twelve-year-old at her first mixed party, because she was sure she seemed sexually knowledgeable while she couldn’t even tell what was going on in a man’s hotel room. It was like being forced to converse in a foreign language she couldn’t remember.

  ‘You perform, don’t you? You used to more. I heard you once at Ravinia, outside Chicago.’

  ‘I remember that concert. Five years ago. That was when you were still living in London.’

  ‘I was back to see my parents. My father was transferred to the Midwest the year before.’

  ‘I’m a little embarrassed you heard me. I’m not much of a soloist.’

  ‘You were fine. And I remember liking the piece. I started smelling grass when we were looking at the score, fresh cut grass in March, and then I remembered where I’d seen you. Lying on a blanket listening to the Chicago Symphony. Levine did a too zippy Beethoven’s Sixth. Right after you played, it started to rain.’

  ‘Yeah, great claps of thunder. I felt like I’d caused it by accident. It started to pour and everybody ran for cover. The sky opened up and the water came down like a wall falling. Drops big as cement blocks. That’s the Midwest. I could almost get nostalgic … I should go now. You have a plane to catch. Where are you headed?’

  ‘Philly. Then Baltimore. Then Atlanta. Then I’m off to Europe.’ He fumbled in his briefcase for his schedule.

  It gave her a rush of memory, for she had spent years on the road. She doubted she could do it now. It was a tremendous drain of vitality. Still she remembered the excitement, the fuss, the exaltation of hot audiences radiating energy back. She felt a moment of strong kinship.

  ‘I should get organized …’ He rose and stretched.

  ‘Be in touch, then. I’ll go back to work.’ She grabbed her parka off the couch and let herself out while he was staring after her.

  ‘Hey!’ he called and stood in the door of the hotel room for a moment, then waved after her and went back in.

  She had base-touching to do with her contacts at the council and a couple of foundations. She visited her favourite record shops. She received some freebies, but mostly what would be found in the slender contemporary music bins. Akhnaten she got free, but she had to buy the new Madame Butterfly and the newest rap record from The Black Plague. Then she met Jimmy and they went to a restaurant supply place and a fancy hardware store to refit her kitchen. ‘Time to be serious,’ she said gloomily, ‘about the fact that I live there and that’s the only place I live. Only it is kind of small, isn’t it? I haven’t much space for dinner parties. Who wants to eat in the kitchen with an unimpeded view of dirty dishes? Since the last ten years have turned me into a good cook, I like to show off now and again. Use it or lose it.’

  They filled the trunk with a stainless steel steamer, a Dutch oven and sauté pan with cover, a food processor on sale, odd gadgets she found she missed, cheese slicers and garlic presses and basters. ‘You and Laurie can come to dinner Saturday with Burt and Leroy. You like them, don’t you?’ She stopped at a Jewish bakery in Brookline for three challehs to freeze. Then they wedged themselves into the traffic on Route Three heading south.

  Jimmy said, ‘If I worked weekends, I could throw another wing on your house. Diningroom downstairs, bedroom for me upstairs.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the perfectly good bedroom you have now?’

  ‘I’m sick of living at home. The room feels like a shoe I’m cramming my foot in that’s too small.’

  Jimmy’s and Johnny’s were tiny rooms facing the road and the woods, across the hall from the master bedroom. Susan kept them as they had been when both children lived at home. Johnny had had a huge fight with Susan the summer Johnny insisted on redecorating in purple and black with big silver spiders. Susan mourned every bit of imitation Victorian wallpaper steamed off and every bit of her own fabrics ripped from the windows and the overstuffed chair. ‘Too much tutti-frutti,’ Johnny had snarled.

  Jimmy nodded. ‘I want to throw out all the old junk, but every time I take a load to the dump, she starts reproaching me. She’s far more attached to my old science projects and my lousy attempts at art photography than I am. It’s as if she thinks I’m trying to take my childhood away from her.’

  Jimmy was looking edgy, she thought. ‘Is something more wrong?’

  ‘I don’t like living with my parents. I can’t afford a place here yet. The summer people have inflated the prices in town beyond what anybody who works for a living at a real job can pay.’

  ‘You have a lot of old buddies around. Move in with one of them.’

  ‘I don’t want to live with another man. I hate stinko bathrooms and a refrigerator full of rotting take-out.’

  ‘You want your wife back. That’s what you want.’

  ‘I want to get laid. That’s for sure. Aren’t you starting to miss it?’

  ‘Do you know what I really miss? The routine. Not having to think about who I’m going to eat supper with. Not having to worry should I buy food for one or for two, because maybe one of them will change their mind and see me.’ If she began telling him what she truly missed, she would be at it all night. She did not think – yet – about sex, but rather she thought of each of their bodies, the noises they made, the smells and textures and taste of intimacy. It was not some body she wanted but specifically Willie, specifically Susan. She did not want a stranger. She did not want to put a random body in place of love.

  ‘Dee, I appreciate loads that you aren’t pumping me about them. That’s heroic restraint.’

  ‘I drove your father off by trying to force him to negotiate for me.’

  ‘You never had a chance with him
once Mother decided it was over. She can always make him feel guilty. She’s queen of the guilt-teasers.’

  ‘Jimmy, I don’t want to get into hating her because I can’t have her.’

  ‘Sure you do. I’m no masochist and I didn’t think you were.’

  ‘No, an awful pragmatist.’

  ‘What we should do is rent your house for the summer to a rich rock band and then split and let them drive my parents crazy. We’ll run off together to some island. Actually I know of a great one in Puget Sound. I even know a house there, up on the rocks. We could still make a profit – it’s cheaper than here.’

  Dinah sighed. ‘The way things are going. I’ll keep it in mind.’

  When they were unpacking the car, in the dark with the Milky Way splashed overhead, Dinah suddenly shushed Jimmy and held up her hand. Yes! The spring peepers, the little frogs with the enormous voices, were trilling their piccolos in the marsh. Spring had come. As she passed under the big oak she heard a stirring over her head and realized the tree was crowded with sleeping birds. Either a migrating flock had put down or the first congregation of red-winged blackbirds had arrived. At dawn she would find out. She had a sudden fierce determination to survive her loneliness, survive her isolation, to grasp hard her own life in this place she loved.

  Chapter Eighteen

  SUSAN

  Susan found it difficult having Jimmy home, but deeply satisfying. She felt as if she had made a secret deal with fate whereby she had given up Dinah to gain Jimmy back. He had been so far. It took all day to reach Seattle and the plane fare was expensive. During the time he lived there, she had seen him at most once a year. She had felt bereft.

  Although she had married extremely young – too young – she had thought her children would take their time. Jimmy had rushed into marriage after college. She had known it would not work in the long run, although she had been prepared to do whatever she could to help. Lisa was simply a pleasant young lady of no outstanding virtues, and frankly Susan had not understood why Jimmy had married her. Nonetheless whenever the phone rang for Jimmy, she held her breath, certain it was Lisa in her seventh month summoning Jimmy back to Seattle. She could not object to his returning – it was the right thing to do – yet she dreaded it.

  She looked down at the yard where Jimmy leaned on a shovel gossiping with Dinah. Dinah was clearly on their land, but Susan managed to restrain herself from ordering her off. It was an absurd impulse, but one she had to fight to control. It hurt to see Dinah, and the pain made her furious. Dinah was deliberately punishing her, but the best course was to pretend she did not notice. Dinah wore an old deerskin jacket Susan remembered, could not help but feel and smell. It had been Mark’s, and indeed, it was long on Dinah, who wore it with the sleeves rolled back at the wrists. It was jaunty, ancient but still handsome, good washable suede of a weight and drape Susan seldom located. Around her head Dinah had bound a rolled scarf. On her feet were high top leather sneakers. She looked jazzy and ready to dance and prance, in fine spirits – knowing that Susan was watching? No, thinking only of herself, as usual. Susan took care to stay back from the window, where she could see without being seen.

  Jimmy was expanding their garden, for the best bottom soil was on Dinah’s plot and she had done most of the gardening for both houses. Susan didn’t see why Jimmy needed to dig up the yard when it was still winter, cold as could be. Nobody had arrived. It would be months before she could sunbathe or swim or even sit outside and read a book. Spring was when she could arrange the first picnic of the year and Tyrone and Laurie and her own family would go to that spot she loved above Bracken Pond where locust trees grew from an old house site, with lush grass underfoot. She would unpack that special osier picnic basket Tyrone had given her with brown quail china plates and slots that everything fitted in, and she would lay out delicacies, some that Tyrone brought her from New York, buttery cherry strudel, good French bread. She would prepare that lunch herself, using The New York Times Cook Book she adored. She would bring out one fabulous treat after another. It would be civilized and the sun would be shining and the air balmy and everyone would be talking, really talking to each other. It would come, if only she held on by her fingernails to the icy slope of the long, long winter. What did Jimmy imagine he was doing? They could buy vegetables, that was what stores were for. If they added in Willie’s and Dinah’s labour, she imagined those Chinese cabbages they boasted about would cost out at five dollars apiece.

  Downstairs, Willie was still at the table with a cup of coffee. She had the impression he was usually at work by now. Then she realized he was probably avoiding Dinah too.

  ‘Having her next door is a damned nuisance,’ Susan said abruptly. It was too early for her to feel hungry, but she poured a cup of his coffee and stirred sugar into it. ‘What possessed us to sell her the old house?’

  ‘You were afraid she’d leave after Mark died,’ Willie said reasonably.

  ‘She paid nothing for it.’

  ‘Forty-five thousand felt like a good price in those days.’

  ‘Too bad she paid it off,’ Susan said.

  Willie stuck his finger in his ear, wincing as he twisted it. ‘That doctor sold the extra land they bought with the Captain’s house. For a lot no bigger than half an acre, would you believe they got a hundred thousand?’

  ‘The old house must be worth two hundred by now. I wonder if she’ll sell it.’ Susan couldn’t decide if that would please her, giving them new neighbours and removing the constant irritant of Dinah’s presence, or whether the idea of Dinah making that much clear profit would be unendurable.

  ‘Jimmy says she hasn’t said anything about leaving.’

  ‘Anybody else would have already made arrangements. She knows we sold her the house as a favour. Now here we are out in the woods miles from anyone with her in our yard.’

  ‘She likes it here, you know that.’

  ‘She never consults anything but her own comfort. We were a convenience, a ready-made family. She didn’t have to do any work, she just took over her neighbours’ house and children and friends. A life to slip into. Just the thing when you’re too self-centred to take the trouble to have children of your own and build your own life.’ As she spoke, she contemplated how much time Jimmy had been spending over there. He ate with Dinah at least as often as he ate with her and Willie.

  ‘I wonder why she never had a baby with her husband,’ Willie mused.

  ‘He was a sick old man. Besides, can you imagine Dinah getting up in the morning and feeding a baby? If the baby wanted to be changed while she was working, she’d probably put it outside to yell like a cat.’

  Willie grinned. ‘Remember when Jenny Hill handed her a baby that time? She stood there holding the poor kid like a sack of potatoes.’

  ‘What is Jimmy doing out there with her? I thought you were going to get an early start on Laurie’s today. You know you should finish it up so that she can move in by Memorial Day. Tyrone’s planning his usual party.’

  ‘I thought maybe I’d take another shot at a new piece I started and then put in an extra long day tomorrow on the boathouse.’

  ‘Willie, if you don’t get that boathouse done, Tyrone will hire somebody else to work on the gallery.’

  ‘Don’t be overzealous, honey.’ Willie’s mouth thinned with annoyance. ‘I’m already subcontracting on the gallery. The problem is getting permits. It’s a change of use and there’re enormous problems. We had to bring in sanitary engineers to get a septic system the Board of Health will approve. Plus we need five more parking spaces to be legal, but the neighbours object.’

  She stopped listening. Really, the town was putting obstacle after obstacle in Tyrone’s way, deriving furtive pleasure from stalling the plans of a man of his stature. How else could those poor little one-cylinder businessmen command his attention for five minutes? She was ashamed of them. She had not the patience for local politics that Willie did. He had always attended town meetings with Dinah and the two of
them gossiped about ground water by the hour. He could not expect her to take an interest – she found politics trivial and full of uninteresting personalities and squalid histories.

  She worried that Willie and Jimmy were lazing along, content to do a spot of work every other day. They were relying on Tyrone’s friendship. It was not fair. Was she the only one in the family who was clear-sighted enough to see where their advantages lay? Yet she knew Willie wanted desperately to be shown in the gallery that was to be. A hundred thousand for a lot. ‘What do you suppose we could get for our house, with real estate prices soaring?’

  Willie shrugged. ‘Who knows, who cares?’

  ‘We’re sitting on a gold mine. Why not find out what it’s worth?’

  ‘It’s not an investment, it’s our home. We couldn’t find a better one.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘This is silly.’ Willie put on his jacket and went out. He headed for his studio, defying her good advice. It was time for her exercises, while both men were outside. If spring ever did come, she would need to be in decent shape so that she could wear the new bathing suit she had ordered from Bergdorf’s catalogue. She had charge accounts at several New York department stores, so she could keep an eye on their lines, what they were pushing. She seldom got to New York to shop, and she disdained shopping in Boston. It was simply not a high fashion town. People wore clothes they had bought ten years before, wore them in restaurants and on the streets. She put in the videotape and started doing aerobics along with the slim figure on the screen. Up and down and up and down and.

  She toyed with the idea of producing hand-painted clothes or beadwork of the kind Laurie had brought back from London. Laurie might show them in the gallery. Perhaps it was time for her to put effort into a line of designer clothes, one-of-a-kind originals, yes, wearable art. That would give her a different status with Tyrone’s friends. Right and left and right and left.