Summer People

by Marge Piercy

  Susan kept saying they no longer had to apologize for their weird life, but he felt as if he had lost status in the eyes of other men. If overtly he had been considered peculiar, always there had been an undertone of envy, you old cock, got two women and makes them accept each other too! He never bothered to explain it was the two women who had chosen each other, and that he had managed handily to include himself. Besides, after the first six months, it wasn’t that way. In some ways he and Dinah were better suited than Dinah and Susan. If they never noticed that, it was out of loyalty to sisterly ideals from the period each had decided to try a relationship with a woman.

  Except for the sound of cars arriving and voices in the yard, Saturday night passed agreeably and quietly. Since Tyrone had let them know he wasn’t coming in until next morning, by private plane, Willie had stopped at the market to rent a Paul Newman film that Susan had regretted missing. After a light digestible supper he cooked (flounder, rice pilaf, a salad) they watched it. Willie felt bad about the salad, bought iceberg lettuce. By this late in April, they always had salad from the garden. He noticed that Dinah did. Her garden was way ahead of his.

  About nine, Susan went upstairs. When she came down in the new peach peignoir she had bought recently, he understood she was inviting him. Surprisingly she spread out a quilt in front of the fireplace. Usually she would not make love downstairs for fear someone would look through the window and see them, but tonight that did not seem to cross her mind.

  He did not think she came, although she insisted she had, but he did not worry about it. He figured tomorrow or the next day they would make love upstairs and she would come. The idea of making love by the fireplace had excited her more than the reality, but with Susan, that was often okay. She would remember the scene romantically and remind him of it.

  Then came Easter. Susan had not realized that Tyrone would be arriving with his assistant and his secretary. She had not planned dinner for two extra people: the ham had been a little skimpy, as was the cake. She had insisted on doing the cooking herself, with the result that dinner was an hour and a half late. Everything looked perfect and was slightly off: a little dry, overcooked, the sauce floury, the glaze sugary, the pastry chewy.

  Susan was upset when she pried Dinah’s guest list out of Laurie. She said to Willie, as they were cleaning up afterward, ‘She only gave a party to compete blatantly with us! I can’t believe she’s being so shameless. And there’s Jimmy and Laurie and Burt and Leroy all eating it up, going from one to the other so they can comparison shop! It’s vulgar.’

  ‘What does it matter? This was a great dinner.’ Sometimes he saw Susan as a pot of sugar syrup, fruit compote, something that would froth up and boil over if it was not watched and stirred. She could lather herself over the littlest things. It made her exciting. He felt immensely calm and strong next to her. He saw himself as a noble and powerfully built Percheron next to a delicate overbred lightning fast Arabian. Unlike Dinah, Susan would never be able to manage without him.

  ‘But inviting Itzak Raab. She’s always poking vicious fun at me when Tyrone brings home some painter I’ve read about in The Times and I dare to think it’s exciting. She’s always been so superior about things any normal human would enjoy. It’s a kind of puritanism, but it didn’t survive wanting to throw something in our faces. She only invited him because she thinks it will put my nose out of joint.’

  ‘But we’ve never even heard him play. What do we care?’ Willie knew about Itzak because he had been interviewed on ‘Fresh Air’ on public radio. He didn’t remember much, except that Itzak sounded as if he came from New York but had been living abroad for years.

  Jimmy, who walked in on the end of the conversation, said, ‘Don’t you guys remember she got a grant to write a piece of music for him?’

  ‘She’s always getting some grant,’ Susan said. ‘Who can remember?’

  Willie felt guilty that he had paid no attention. Their lives had become too chaotic; important information slipped past him.

  The next morning as he was working in his studio, he saw the man Itzak walking with Dinah by the lake, a couple of hours later than her usual hike. He had stayed. Perhaps she had other guests? He could not help watching them out of sight into the woods. They were talking intently. Itzak touched her arm, her cheek, her ass. Willie felt a blow in his own belly as if something hard and metallic had entered him. He could not catch his breath. They were lost to him among the trees but he could still see that hand cupping her buttock for a moment as they walked, turned toward each other, closing in like parentheses.

  He sat abruptly on his stool. He did not think of himself as jealous, but what he had seen made him feel disembowelled. It was not right! He longed to chase after them and do something to the man. Push him in the pond, stomp on his face, tear at him so that he would hurt as Willie was hurting. How could Dinah let him? She had slept with him. She had taken Itzak into that bed he himself had hardly ever slept in.

  He was stunned. He had not imagined she would so quickly let another man have her. He had figured that Susan’s anger would wear off and their life would resume together. Partly he had let Susan pull him loose from Dinah so that she would calm down. He wanted her to stop complaining and remaking their history together so that Dinah became ever the deeper villain. He gave up trying to start his new piece that was to be a great shining fishhook impaling a man, and went to work with Jimmy on the boathouse roof. All day he kept glancing toward Dinah’s. Twice more he saw them together. He kept waiting for the man to clear out, but that evening, he was still there, and the next morning. He was a strongly built man but short. Willie kept hearing his voice outside, sharp, rasping on his ears. They seemed noisy with each other, talking, talking, arguing, singing at the top of their lungs. They played music together half the day, something Willie could not do with her. He wondered if it was intimate, like making love. They both played flute sometimes and sometimes Dinah played piano and the man, flute.

  Finally, finally he saw Dinah take Itzak off in her car. When she returned an hour and a half later, she was alone. The intruder was gone. He knew that before Dinah had come to them, she had had casual affairs. No doubt this was one of them; but suppose it wasn’t. It seemed to him he had thought about nothing else for days. He could not see anything, he could not work. He felt as if that initial metal bolt were fixed through him, as if he were the man in his sculpture. His energy, his attention were bleeding away.

  He bided his time. The next morning Susan was sleeping turned on her side with her auburn hair falling over her face, snoring softly, sweetly, sounding like a kettle about to boil as he slid out of bed even more quietly than usual and slipped downstairs. He was early in order to watch for Dinah. He dressed in the kitchen, standing at the window. Jimmy still slept upstairs. Jimmy would be pleased, no doubt, if he made up with Dinah, but he felt embarrassed in front of his son, wishing their foibles and emotional turbulence were not so baldly apparent. When he had lived in his parents’ house, he would have preferred to remain ignorant of the ups and downs of their marriage.

  When he saw her he was ready to take off. Guiltily he felt the house behind him, the windows staring after him. He hoped nothing would wake Susan. He could not bear the fight that would result. He had no idea what he was going to say to Dinah, but he could not stay away. He had to take hold of her and do something, make her look at him, make her talk to him, he did not know. He was hurting and could not focus on anything else.

  He ran down the path after her. She was walking quickly, but when she heard his steps, she swung around startled. When she saw it was him, her face closed in and then slightly relaxed. ‘Is something wrong?’

  He could not think what to say. Her face seemed vivid, the dark eyes that always warmed him. Coffee. She looked smaller, rounder, perter than he remembered. She looked like an apple, something to bite, to nibble on. He had no words in his mind at all, only his pain and his delight. He could not think of anything at all to say so he took h
old of her by the shoulders and lifted her off her feet to kiss her. She came against him awkwardly and then she kicked him in the shin.

  He dropped her and then picked her up again and continued. He said her name again and again. Finally she pried herself loose and fell back against an oak to stand at bay defying him. ‘Jealous, are we?’

  ‘How could you?’

  ‘What business is it of yours?’ Then suddenly she was laughing and he was laughing too. He seized her head between his hands and shook her, cupping her ears. He hugged her again and this time she hugged him back.

  ‘Willie, you’re impossible! Have you no shame?’

  ‘I want you. I can’t help it.’

  ‘You’re a pig! You’re a dog! You’re a jackass!’

  He was turning in a slow circle, still clutching her by the waist. Where could they do it? He wanted just to fall on the ground and get into her at once, but it was chilly and wet with last night’s rain. He thought of pushing into her against the oak, but probably she would not come and she had to. No, they needed a bed. A bed someplace. If they went back to Dinah’s house, Susan would see them. The Captain’s house. Those people had left a key with Susan, because she had volunteered to let the tile person in when she came to work on the kitchen and bathrooms sometime in the next two weeks. Everything was done except tiling and painting. Susan had offered to keep track of the work for the MacIvors. They had been overjoyed. He could see the key Candida MacIvor had handed to Susan. It was hanging in the kitchen, on the same peg as the key Susan was proud to have that unlocked Tyrone’s house. ‘Dinah, wait for me. I’ll be right back. I love you. Please wait for me.’

  ‘What’s the matter? You have to take a crap? You suddenly remembered a pot on the stove? You left the water running?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he shouted and rushed back along the path to his house. He ran and ran with his heart bursting. The key was hanging on a peg behind the door, neatly labelled in Susan’s round script, Dr MacIvor residence. He took it and then hovered at the foot of the steps listening. He could hear Jimmy’s clock radio faintly playing. No sound from Susan, who would not normally rise for two hours. Shutting the door quietly, he ran toward where he had left Dinah. He half expected her to be gone. She might be barricaded into her house. No, she was sitting on a log about twenty yards farther along the path, giving him a slowly measuring look but waiting. He was almost paralysed by guilt for the pain he imagined he had caused her, but he had to keep moving toward her through the thick air and the light that seemed bright and icy. The light had turned to heavy crystal. Even the trees looked judgemental.

  Then he had his hands on her again. She was warm and solid. Her flesh was more compact and more resilient than Susan’s. She felt more animal-like. She felt stronger. He was rushing her along the path toward the Captain’s house. She did not say anything at all until they had stepped into the clearing. ‘Aren’t they here?’ She was looking at the key in his hand.

  ‘They went back Monday morning to Boston.’ He knew the tiler and the painters were not about to walk in, because he had the key. The beds must be ready to use, because Candida and Alec had slept there that weekend.

  ‘High-tech boxy,’ she said with disgust as they came into what had been the hall and now was a huge livingroom two storeys tall. Of the previous house, only a fireplace and a couple of the old structural beams remained, now suspended in midair. Blowsy white couches like overstuffed beanbags were clumped before the fireplace and again before the floor-to-ceiling windows that opened on the pond.

  The short steep stairs like the flight in Dinah’s house had been replaced with circular metal stairs – the same kind Willie had installed in Laurie’s. The local supply house had run a special on them and all the builders were using them this year. Dinah was keeping up a sarcastic commentary on the furniture and the construction and the artwork he could barely hear for the blood roaring in his ears. He was erect already and his prick was rubbing on his jeans. He was figuring out where the bedroom would be. He got it right on the first try, a vast king-sized bed onto which he tugged her, falling on her before she could change her mind. He was afraid something would go wrong and she would escape him and disappear.

  Dinah was not to be hurried. She did not undress but made him wrestle her, laughing under him, sliding away from him, nipping his ears, his wrists, his cheeks. She did not usually bite him, but she was still angry. In the middle of kissing him she would suddenly turn and sink her teeth into his shoulder. He got on her, something they did not do often because of their discrepancy in weight and size. He did not like to make her feel smothered. This time he was too needy, too harried to wait for her to climb on him. Ah, he was taking her back, taking her back. He determined to make it last. With Dinah there was a point in fucking when he could feel things change, as if he penetrated suddenly to a deeper hotter layer. Her whole body seemed to expand then. She would seem to wrap up and around him, or if she were on top, to flow over him as if her bones had turned to electric eels. Then he always knew she would come soon.

  Afterward they lay side by side on the awning-striped bedspread recovering. He decided he would say nothing about the man. Why bother? That man was gone and Willie was here, in possession. It was more generous to pretend he knew nothing.

  ‘How are you going to explain this chez vous?’ She rose on her elbow.

  ‘I didn’t think I would. It would only upset her.’

  ‘And we mustn’t upset her. Yes, that was how Chamberlain felt about Hitler, so he gave him Czechoslovakia.’

  He would not argue. He felt too good. ‘Weren’t you surprised I have a key to this house?’

  ‘You’re turning into the local concierge for all the summer people.’

  She was angry still. He tried to think of something to placate her. He could not volunteer to cook one of her favourite meals, which had always worked in the past, because they could not eat together. He would make a promise. ‘Look, I want things straightened out. I want to work toward getting us all back together again. That’s my goal. Wouldn’t you rather have that too, than stay mad at me?’

  She was silent a long time, then sat up shivering. The furnace was set to come on only if the temperature fell below 40 inside, so the pipes would not freeze in the event of an unseasonable frost. ‘Yes,’ she said finally and sadly. ‘I’d rather have that. But what can you do?’

  ‘Work on her. Gradually. I’m telling you, this fall we’ll all make it up and be back together … Now let me give you a massage.’ She could never resist that, he knew; like a cat, she always wanted her back rubbed.

  ‘We left a stain like a paramecium.’

  ‘It’ll dry. They’ll never notice.’

  Dinah smiled, one side of her mouth curling up. ‘Most people notice stains on their bedspreads, Willie.’

  ‘So they’ll think the roof leaks.’

  With a sigh she turned onto her stomach letting him straddle her to begin. Her tight hard buttocks bunched beneath him. He swore to himself he would straighten everything out in the fall. He did not have faith he could work Susan around during the summer, but he would keep on it. Eventually his persistence would pay off, because Susan was pulled emotionally hither and yon and would be vulnerable to his wishes at some point, maybe even begin to yearn for Dinah on her own. As he kneaded Dinah’s strong back, he thought of a tripod, a three-legged stool, sturdy like the one he used when he was working. His life would once again be set firmly in both of them, his two sweet and spicy and complementary women. His wives.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  SUSAN

  Susan strongly objected to what the government had done to holidays. When Memorial Day was really the end of May, it had been the true beginning of summer. Now it was usually too early, when weather was uncertain on the Cape and a week could make an enormous difference. Willie was looking forward to Tyrone’s first party of the season and wanted it as soon as possible, so he did not agree. Often he would seem to assent, to avoid a fight, but he
always did so with particularly vague phrases so that she knew he secretly disagreed. It was an irritating habit.

  She was even more eager for the party than Willie, but she could gladly wait an extra week for a better chance of decent weather. The shad bloom was just falling from the trees, an impressionist dream of white. Burt brought by smoked herring, saying the run was ending. Willie had been unusually considerate and placating in the past few weeks, as if worried about her. Or perhaps now that they had settled into a real marriage again, he simply had more time for her. He had been working regularly on the boathouse, without her having to nag him, and it was close to completion. The electrician had finally deigned to come. Jimmy returned from Seattle in time to help Willie with the finish work.

  ‘What happened in Seattle?’ she asked Jimmy. ‘Are you getting back together?’

  ‘We’re starting divorce proceedings. That’s what Lisa wants.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’d rather be back with her, but not the way she feels about me now.’

  He had been there for the birth of his son. Although they had agreed to call a boy Gordon after Willie’s father, Lisa had unilaterally changed her mind and named the baby Christopher. It seemed to her, listening to Jimmy, that his time had been divided between the hospital and lawyers’ offices. He had seen his lawyer, Lisa’s lawyer and the lawyer representing the third partner in the restaurant. There seemed to be legal complications around the bankruptcy.

  Jimmy presented her with Polaroid shots of the baby, held by Jimmy or a sullen Lisa. Susan was a grandmother. She found it disgusting that an undistinguished-looking infant named Christopher in Seattle had some claim on her. She hoped that Jimmy would not go around making a big fuss, as she did not find grandparenthood inspiring. She was hardly ready to take to an overstuffed chair and watch TV game shows all day as her own grandma had.

  Jimmy was around little that week. He was off with his old buddies, hanging out with the Captain, over at Dinah’s and once again spending too much time with Laurie. She began to wonder if she had been wise to wish that he would not go back to Lisa. She remembered that someone had said that the worst fate was getting what you prayed for. She had certainly craved him done with his wife and restored to her.