by Marge Piercy
The Hills, who lived on the pond, were out in their Sunfish with a striped sail. Betty had fallen asleep against a tree. Tyrone was talking to Candida MacIvor, who was deeply tanned already and wore a gold bathing suit cut extremely high on the sides, claiming she had already been swimming in their pond. Laurie thought she was crazy. She had stuck her foot in and found it bitter cold. Memorial Day was too early. Laurie wondered how Candida kept her pubic hair from showing, with the suit cut so high. She must shave herself there. The thought made Laurie’s flesh crawl.
Jimmy said at her ear, ‘Maybe she’s bald.’
‘Was I so obvious looking at her?’
‘Laurie, that’s where everybody’s looking.’
Jimmy was right. Not only Tyrone, but Willie and Mr Bromley were gathered around Candida’s ten-feet-long legs shining like bronze, oiled, hairless. Susan and Mrs Bromley had drawn together protectively. They were both wearing pleasant enough clothes, Mrs Bromley in tailored lined pants and a linen shirt, Susan in a dress of some gauzy flowing stuff. But Candida MacIvor’s legs danced away with all the attention. Laurie felt slightly amused, slightly sympathetic to the neglected women. She was not involved or competing. Jimmy sat beside her. Candida MacIvor’s legs meant nothing to him, obviously. Laurie wondered where Dr MacIvor was.
The next morning was foggy but the sun burnt its way through the overcast by ten. She went to the beach over the dune. The sun was warm enough, although the water was too cold to go in. She never swam in the ocean until mid-July. The pond would be heating up soon and the Bay too. She wondered if she should have bought a sexier bathing suit than her serviceable maillot. She always wanted a suit that dried quickly and that she could really swim in, a suit that would not come off in the water or bind her uncomfortably. Maybe she did not know how to seem sexy to a man. Jimmy obviously liked her, but just as obviously he did not think of her as sexually available. Every man at the picnic had thought lustfully of Candida MacIvor. Laurie tried to imagine herself in that bathing suit. She would have felt silly. She would have felt uncomfortable. It looked as if it would cut into a woman’s tender flesh.
She had never wanted to go around attracting men at random, as Candida had done. Why did Candida need that? She had a husband. What did she get out of that buzz of lusting males? Did a woman have to do that to make the point to the one man she did want that she was attractive? Did men only like and want what other men wanted? Like advertising a diet soft drink: this is the one, this is the most popular, all the models in the ads are drinking this one.
She kept hoping Jimmy would be at the beach, but if he was, would he come over the dune as she had, or would he go to the big public beach half a mile south where he would find his buddies? She resolved to find out, as if casually, during the next week. She disliked the public beach, because she hated everybody staring at everybody else, the obvious appraisals, the cold vicious competitive sizing up in the looks of women and men. She hated to feel on display, judged.
At three she went back to dress for the party. She would rather just put on a shirt and slacks, but that hadn’t gotten her anyplace, had it? She remembered quarrelling with her mother, who would lay out her clothes on the bed. ‘I don’t want to wear the pink jumper, Mommy. I want the plaid skirt.’
She had not sufficiently appreciated having her mother make the decisions for her. Now she was tugging on outfits and flinging them on the bed. Her room looked like a thrift shop. Finally she decided she would wear the summer dress Susan had given her. At least that would make Susan happy. Susan had seemed keyed up lately, nervous, a little frantic. She kept wanting everything to be perfect, as if she were the hostess of the universe. Laurie hoped she wouldn’t be too dressed up for the crowd, but she need not have worried.
Mrs Bromley wore a khaki linen safari dress, and Betty wore something similar in beige. Susan and Laurie were twins too, in two versions of the loose gauzy print things Susan had been making, with enormous sleeves and ruffles around the V necks. Candida arrived at three in a white halter dress that when she turned was backless, plunging well below her waist.
Laurie was leaning on the railing of the dock watching the reflections on the water when she heard Candida talking to Tyrone behind her. ‘Oh, I’m not really a married woman. No woman who’s with a devoted doctor like Alec is really married, you know. He’s married to his hospital and his practice. I see far less of him than his nurse does. I’m not in his confidence. That’s simply the way it is, with an important doctor.’ It was obviously a rap she delivered to men, a form of flirtation. Laurie considered accidentally pushing her into the pond, but she could not figure how to lift her off the railing. An hour later, Laurie heard Candida telling Willie the same drivel.
Laurie imitated Candida to Jimmy as they sat on the end of the dock, both their shoes off to dabble in the water. Dinah was rowing toward them in a dinghy. ‘Did she give you that line too?’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t waste it on me. I’m not her prey. Neither is my father, but she may not be sure yet.’
‘Is Dinah coming here?’
‘I know your father invited her.’
‘Do you think Candida MacIvor is really attractive?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’ She twisted uncomfortably. ‘The water’s still cold.’ She pulled her feet out.
‘I like it like this. I’m going in tomorrow if it stays nice.’ He took her foot in his hand and chafed it. ‘I’m always warm.’
She felt as if she would pass out. Heat flooded up her leg and she could not look at him. ‘It’s too cold for me,’ she repeated inanely.
‘You have such high arches,’ he remarked, looking at her foot as he held it. ‘You’re so slender, you must chill easily. You have to be careful.’
‘I’m not that fragile!’
‘Of course you are.’ He released her foot.
She had to control herself not to run away. Any man she was really interested in could reduce her at once to the early age of adolescence, render her speechless with a touch.
‘Did I upset you? I like to tease you. You invite it sometimes, Laurie. I brought you a present from Seattle.’
She looked up, ‘What kind of present?’
‘I won’t tell you. And you can’t have it yet.’
‘A book?’ She tried to imagine what he might have bought for her. Suddenly it seemed very important.
‘A real present. But you have to wait. Sometime this week, when you have been very very good.’ He grinned at her. ‘Or otherwise, as the case may be. Isn’t it more fun to anticipate?’
It seemed to her the air between them was thick with his sensual presence, charged with her desire. Everything he said could have a literal meaning and another meaning if he were interested in her. For the first time in her life, she wished that Tyrone would go back to the city early and take all the houseguests with him. She would not be lonely this week. Perhaps.
Chapter Twenty-Six
SUSAN
Susan had anticipated Tyrone’s Memorial Day party for days, and then, that morning, she got into a ridiculous quarrel with Willie. She got up early and went to find him. The morning was warm already, the sky a brilliant swimming pool hue, festive, cloudless. He was in his studio working on a piece she assumed was new. He did not encourage her to come to his studio; it was private. He complained she talked too much when she visited, as if he didn’t keep the stupid radio chattering. Today was a holiday and she had an image in her head of the two of them eating outside on the picnic table by the pond they hardly ever used – soon it would be too buggy anyhow – and then going inside and making love before she began to think about dressing for the party. Perhaps there would be time to go to the ocean together and see who would be there, the first real beach day of the year.
The trouble started immediately because his response was, ‘But I had breakfast two hours ago. I don’t need a second breakfast. I’m not trying to see how fat I can get.’
/> Was he implying she was gaining weight? She hadn’t been walking much, now that she didn’t go out with Dinah. Was she heavier? She felt the clutch of anxiety. There was no worse time to fatten up than the late spring, just before she stripped down for her summer clothes. The idea of going to the beach faded away. As her anxiety revved up, she remembered a problem from the day before. ‘Willie, we have to speak to that woman who did the tiles and the painter, what’s his name, the Rindge boy. Candida says that somebody was using their bed.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Willie snapped. He was usually so even tempered she was startled. ‘How the hell would she know?’
‘She says someone obviously was using it. I didn’t ask for the details.’
‘Listen, Susan, we aren’t going to get into hot water with local people by accusing them of fucking in the MacIvor house. Probably one of them lay down and took a nap. If she wants to make herself absurd by insisting they used her house as a motel, let her do it. But you stay out of it.’
‘It is awkward …’ Susan felt confused. She had offered to speak to the tiler and the painter, meaning of course that Willie would; now she understood how embarrassing such a conversation could be. She would quietly let the matter drop.
‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ Willie went on, sounding harder, louder than she was used to. ‘I think Candida MacIvor had an affair with somebody and her husband saw signs of it, and now she’s trying to say it was somebody else. That’s what I think.’
Susan saw Candida’s nearly naked body flaunted in the bathing suit that had been so inappropriate to wear to the picnic, especially after she had removed the long skirt. Susan felt less enthusiastic about the MacIvors. Alec was on duty for the weekend and Candida was out here by herself, flirting with all the men. She was relieved that Willie did not seem as fascinated as he had appeared at the picnic. She hoped that Alec would be around during the summer. She did not look forward to a lot more of Candida on the prowl.
Willie had eased her out the door before she realized she had failed in her morning’s plan. She decided she would stroll over to Tyrone’s early and see if he needed help. However, no one was home except his secretary Sally blow-drying her hair and Celeste grimly busy in the kitchen. All the rest were off playing tennis.
Finally she decided that regardless of the water temperature she was going to swim. She would swim the length of the pond to the float that Tyrone had already had Allie Dove tow out and anchor for him. It was a longish swim but she would try it.
She had not swum far past the end of their dock when she realized she was too breathless in the cold. No one was watching. It didn’t matter if she turned back. Tomorrow she would swim farther. The raft was unrealistically far anyhow, almost to Tyrone’s. She always swam there from his beach. She loved to lie there sipping martinis with Tyrone and his guests. A floating pleasure dome, for the raft had a shade bower at one end for those who had their fill of sun. She would gradually build up her distance. She was always out of condition at the beginning of the season. She resolved to swim every day for exercise, right after she rose.
She decided she would skip breakfast and just have a cup of black coffee and one and only one of the croissants Tyrone had brought her from New York, without even butter or jam. She ate outside. Dinah had no company this weekend. The affair with that violinist must have petered out. Peter out: good phrase for how men’s sexual energies waned once a relationship was no longer new and the zest of the conquest abated. Dinah would have thought that pun amusing: she would have laughed all the way down to her belly. Dinah loved to laugh. Susan turned her face away from the open windows through which came the sounds of Dinah twiddling away on her flute. Tyrone knew she loved a particular kind of almond croissant, with a sweet almost marzipan centre, and he had brought her a box of them. Thoughtful as always. Still she had not enjoyed his pointed teasing yesterday about why Dinah wasn’t at the picnic.
Da-dum-da-dum-dum, da-dum-dum-da-dum, Dinah kept tootling. It was catchy, but she kept repeating it over and over until Susan saw Dinah as a large woodpecker repeating its maddening cry ad infinitum, like the whippoorwill who had driven one of Tyrone’s wives insane crying under their window. Yes, Janette, the one who had looked like Candida. Janette had bought herself an air rifle and practised with it until they all got really tired of hearing her. She took to firing it out the window at night. Tyrone got rid of her soon after, to everyone’s relief.
Susan had opinions about Willie’s work; she could see when he was endlessly repeating himself. She could see that Siobhan was just slopping disparate images together in a collage of dissonance. She had never had any idea whether what Dinah did was good. It all sounded pleasant enough. Sometimes it made her think of thunderstorms or waves rolling in or treetops stirred by wind. Sometimes it made her remember feeling sexy or lonely. But after a while when she was listening to Dinah’s music, she would begin to daydream and she would come to minutes later with the piece still meandering along.
She had never been musical. No one in her family was. Her mother had sung an Irish song when she was doing dishes, something tuneless and sentimental. ‘Oh Danny Boy, the pipes are calling,’ et cetera. Her father labelled it rot. Singing was what the shanty Irish did, cry in their beer and talk about what they would do if they could, he said. She had revered her father when she was little, because he seemed fierce, strong, capable of anything. He would lift her on his shoulders to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade. They lived in New Jersey then, close enough to New York to see the skyscrapers across the marshes. Then he moved them to Roanoke, Virginia. Her mother always put it that way: when your father moved us to Roanoke. He had been a mechanic but he bought a franchise to sell VWs just when they were about to become the answer to cheap car prayers.
He moved them into a house with a neat lawn, a white picket fence, and at the end of the driveway, a matched set of whitewashed blackfaced grooms holding lanterns. She could remember the point in high school when she had decided they were tacky and tried to get her father to remove them. In high school art class she had discovered her sense of colour and line. As if she had converted to a new religion, war was born between herself and her parents. Everything of which they were proudest, the visible signs of their ascent to the comfortable middle class, was a sign of shame to her, a failure of taste.
Perhaps she had left home in hot rebellion not because she had been seeking sexual freedom – although that had followed; not because she had grown bored with being dragged to church and lying in confession – although she certainly had sworn to herself she would never attend Mass again; but because she could not stand to look at her parents’ wall-to-wall green nylon carpeting or the red barn paintings bought in furniture stores to go over the hideous beige couches or the free-form redwood coffee table (exactly the colour of a tongue depressor) of which they were extremely proud. She had left home to escape constant rows with her mother about how she would dress, how not.
Susan sighed, the music lapping at her, infiltrating her thoughts, sucking her into its moods. She had noticed early with Willie that he had no taste in clothes, but she had said to herself, I can fix that. I’ll dress him. After all, he was an uncommonly tall slender handsome man. Ha. Willie loved the sloppy clothes he wore and he had never let her dress him. To wear jeans and very old Irish sweaters meant to him he was a true artist, liberated from his father’s business suits and foulard ties.
The music suddenly stopped. Susan realized she had been sitting with a cup of cold coffee for an hour, gazing at the ripples and watching the minnows flick across the bottom sand that mimicked scales. She felt a gaze on her. There was Dinah only ten feet away, barefoot in shorts and tee shirt. Dinah had beautiful legs, not long and classic like Candida’s, but muscular, perfectly shaped: like a powerfully built pony, a horse of the moors. She had crept up, quiet as Tosca who was standing just behind her also eyeing Susan. While Susan stared back, Tosca sat on her haunches and licked daintily at a paw. Dinah went on gawki
ng.
Susan felt herself soften through her belly. Her damned body did not care at all for her ideas and her scruples and her measured resentment. Dinah gazed and her body began to cook, bubbling like hot mud. She could not think of words to say that would make Dinah ridiculous. Dinah’s eyes had a way of seeming to turn darker when she stared. Susan could not remember why they were quarrelling. It seemed trivial, unnecessary. Those legs could be twined around her. That head could be cheek to her thigh. Her thigh remembered the heaviness of that head, the crisp hair half tickling her, curly as her own pubic hair. Slowly all the blood in her body was drawing into her torso and beating between her hips. She was slowly engorging, mesmerized.
She leaped to her feet and ran into the house, clutching her robe about her. She imagined Dinah chasing her, grabbing her. When she turned back at the kitchen door, Dinah was walking toward her own house, Tosca at her heels trotting tail high.
The phone rang. With a feeling of relief, Susan ran to answer it, still shaken. What had come over her? Maybe she should not eat so lightly in the mornings. It was almost noon anyhow. It was Tyrone. She felt as if instinctively he had called to protect her. ‘Susan darling, do you know where Willie moved the croquet set that used to be in the boathouse? I’m sure he put it someplace logical when they began the work, but I haven’t been able to find it, and Laurie has no idea.’
‘Just a moment, and I’ll go ask him.’
She ran to his studio. He was wearing one of his protective masks, cooking up a plastic. The studio stank of chemicals. To hear her, he had to lay everything aside and take off the mask. ‘The croquet set? How in hell do I know?’ He turned and stalked back to his work.