by Marge Piercy
‘Willie, try to remember,’ she screeched. ‘You must have put it somewhere. You have to take responsibility for what you do.’
‘Tell Tyrone to use his head for a mallet. I’m working! I’m sorry. We can go to the party early and I’ll look for it then, okay? Tell Tyrone you couldn’t find me or I was moulding resins, but that we’ll arrive early.’
They did. Everybody was dressing upstairs. Celeste greeted them coolly and tried to install them on the deck. Willie thought he’d put the objects stored in the boathouse into the basement under the kitchen. However, Laurie had moved a number of her old paintings down there, standing against the shelves. Willie moved a few boxes, but all he did was get dust on his hands and his shirt.
When Tyrone appeared in a black and white Italian sports jacket, a fine tightly woven linen with a surface like silk, and grey pants in a similar weave, he seemed surprised at the mention of croquet. ‘Sally found the mallets and all, but the moles have been at the lawn. We must get someone to take care of it. I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.’
He smiled at both of them, took Susan’s hand, his other palm lightly supporting her at the far elbow as they strolled out on the deck where Celeste and Sally were applying the final touches to the buffet. From the punch bowl reared a frozen swan, perfect because just unmoulded, surrounded by a huge flower of cut peaches, pineapples, oranges, papayas and kiwi fruit. The rumaki were hot. The Brie was just beginning to quiver. There were three dips, pale green, pale pink and white with slivers of something black. She assumed the pink was salmon, the green, avocado. Sally had changed for the party into an oversized white dress that looked like the nurse’s uniform of a giantess. Sally was a plain English girl with a lovely voice and accent who worked fourteen hours a day for Tyrone. He always had gorgeous receptionists and nunlike secretaries, devout and selfless in his service.
Tommy Lloyd, the Captain’s younger brother, and the Captain himself were setting up on the water’s edge to open oysters. Willie immediately hurried over to them, as if his first priority at a party had to be to gossip with the help. It would be a wonder if Willie didn’t start opening oysters with them.
Betty Gore was wearing a Chanel number. She was always exquisitely if conservatively dressed. Susan always wished she could make more of a connection with Betty, but she was laconic and at her best when they were playing tennis or bridge. Susan thought Betty rather a romantic figure, for she had married a racing car driver, a British viscount, with whom she had had a couple of sons and who had died at Monte Carlo against a wall. Her other marriage seemed much flatter, yet Susan sensed that she truly mourned her last, who had widowed her again. Susan did not think Betty was in love with Tyrone, or he with her, but she seemed, with her many connections in society on both sides of the Atlantic, a suitable companion for him, one appropriate but not threatening, not consuming his attention.
Laurie was wearing the dress Susan had made for her. Susan had begun the habit when Laurie was eleven and pitifully thin and shy. She always made a good summer dress for Siobhan and she began to make one at the same time for Laurie. Once again, Laurie was more her daughter than Siobhan, who had refused from fifteen on to wear the beautiful things Susan made for her.
They must find somebody suitable for Laurie. Why didn’t Tyrone invite some young men? Susan hardly thought that Laurie was supposed to take up with his assistant, a rabbity nerd named Donald something who walked around cradling a cellular telephone as somebody else might cuddle a small dog. He was the only man under forty-five, not counting Jimmy, who was as usual immediately at Laurie’s side. He was married still and he had just had a son born. Why didn’t she think that would slow him down? Fortunately he had just spent five months with Laurie without bothering her, so likely Susan’s first guess was correct, that neither of them could stand in as the romantic stranger for the other. She shuddered when she considered the possibility of their involvement. She did not want to deal with Tyrone’s reaction to that, not at all. He would think she was somehow trying to crawl into his family through the back door, that she had pushed her son at Laurie. It would cast her in a sort of false mother-in-law role she did not relish. She must bring up with Tyrone the necessity to invite guests who would flirt with Laurie and ease her back into the current of life, toward romance and marrying again.
She managed to catch Tyrone briefly and began to discuss that subject with him, but he seemed a little pained. ‘I don’t think she’s ready for anything as risky as a relationship. Let her settle into her new digs. Let her put energy into the gallery. Next year is time enough for such ideas.’
‘Tyrone, she’ll fall in love with somebody. Women always do.’
‘Now, Susan, you’re far more sensible than that, and so is Laurie. She’s been badly hurt. She needs time out from men. When she’s ready, she’ll come back to the city and I’ll set her up properly there.’ He swept forward to greet Candida, who actually looked decent, until she swung around toward the pond and her dress was cut down to her buttocks. There seemed to be several feet of naked back hanging there among all the women in beige and pale pastels, linen and gauze. Her blonde hair was up on top of her head in a knot, except for a lock on either side curling along her cheek. The effect was artful, flirtatious. Susan noted that Candida moved rather carefully, not nodding, turning her body rather than her head, so as not to dislodge the hairdo. Betty Gore stood looking at Candida a moment. The sight seemed to make her instantly fatigued, for she went at once to find a chaise-longue.
I could wear clothes that extreme, Susan thought; I could bring it off as well as she can. I’m tall and well built. I just never think to wear something that bold and grabby. I’ve always designed my clothes so you can move well in them. She couldn’t dance in that dress or play croquet or even sneeze hard. I don’t approve of clothing that hangs so gingerly on the body. It’s not real clothing. It’s like big flashy costume jewellery that loses its brilliants right away and the catch breaks.
Suddenly she realized Dinah was standing by the food, spearing the smoked salmon that had just appeared. Tyrone had invited the Hills, and they flanked her, both talking at once while Dinah steadily ate. Dinah had thrown on a lavender gauze sundress Susan had made for her, a series of four loose tiers, but she had obviously forgotten to put anything under it. Standing on the deck with the light reflecting off the water behind her, that fact was quite clear. Her other concession to the party was to wear sandals and paint her toenails purple, although she was wearing no other makeup. Her hair stood up in a halo of kinks with droplets of water resting on the ends of her curls, as if she had dipped her head in the pond. Perhaps she had. Susan could picture her doing just that.
She could hear Candida flirting with Tyrone, while Sally was chattering to her about ice sculpture, a subject for which Susan felt an indifference vast as the arctic. She recognized that Sally just wanted to talk to someone about something. She looked around for Willie. He was drifting slowly but inexorably along the deck toward Dinah. She had to abort that fast. She wrenched herself free of Sally by a heroic series of non sequiturs. ‘My husband is a sculptor but I don’t think he has ever worked in ice. There he is. That reminds me, I must ask him if he found the croquet set for Tyrone.’
‘Oh, I found that earlier,’ Sally called after her but she was already fleeing. After him.
Mrs Bromley caught her by the arm. ‘Susan. That was such a delightful picnic yesterday.’
Dinah had got free of the Hills and was eating oysters as fast as Tommy and Toby Lloyd could open them. They were all laughing heartily together. Dinah was dribbling oyster liquid on her dress. She never shaved under her arms. Susan was sure she could see the little bush of her pubic hair. Willie was at her elbow but Tyrone arrived simultaneously. Now they were laughing too. Toby Lloyd winked at Willie. Candida was left to display her naked back to whoever cared. Mr Bromley cared. He joined her at once. Mrs Bromley was talking about diets she had tried and spas she had gone to. She said she understood why
that woman had killed Dr Tarnower. ‘It had nothing to do with sex, but everything to do with protein overload and vitamin deficiency.’
Tyrone, Willie and Dinah were eating oysters while Dinah was talking, probably loudly and dogmatically, waving her free hand so that Susan could see her breasts swing under the loose tent of dress. Willie was leaning over her proprietorially. How dare he act proprietorially over Dinah? Tyrone was nodding, nodding again. Now he was set to refute something, admonishing finger tapping the air. What were they so animated about? Mrs Bromley’s voice hissed with excitement, ‘Without sufficient fibre in your diet, colonic cancer results. Moreover no diet works for a woman our age if our bodies don’t think they’re getting enough bulk.’ She leaned closer to Susan, saying again and again, women our age, women with our weight problems, women with our metabolic rates, women with our need for calcium and iron. She had Susan pinned against the railing of the deck, trapped between the pond and herself.
Tyrone had taken Dinah’s hand and was pointing the fingers as if using them to illustrate or count. Willie moved closer yet, as if to monitor Tyrone to make sure he didn’t keep any of the fingers he was borrowing. Toby kept slipping oysters into her other hand, as fast as she could eat them. Dinah stood there square on her feet the way she liked to plant herself and monopolized the men as if she never dreamed they could both see right through her dress, with the sun dancing off the water behind her. Really, Candida had been outdone. Dinah didn’t even look as if she had thought twice about her appearance; just as natural and down-homey as could be and no underwear. Everybody wore underwear nowadays; sexy lingerie was in, boned undergarments, silk chemises, camisoles trimmed in exquisite lace, bustiers, long-line strapless brassieres built like the iron maiden, power shorts for men. Women with large breasts bought brassieres guaranteed to make them look smaller, to squash them in. Nobody had gone around for a decade letting her breasts swing like a cow’s udder. It was unbelievable. Mrs Bromley was explaining why a liquid protein diet was hard on the kidneys. ‘It’s plain murder,’ she said, ‘especially for women our age!’
Dinah was just doing this to upset her. It was a way of taking a dress Susan had made for her and perverting it utterly as she stood there eating oysters by the dozen and smiling that strange smile with the lips only that Willie had said was reminiscent of the archaic smile on a Greek kore, those statues of maidens or young goddesses he liked. It was maddening, and Mrs Bromley, fixing her with a baleful glare, was rattling on about the dangers of unpolyunsaturated fats. It turned out she had not loved the picnic after all, for she had found the food unhealthy and fattening. ‘Mayonnaise is one of the most dangerous substances you can consume! Butter is the second!’ Susan decided the woman was both mad and rude, but her own ingrained politeness made her unable to interrupt the tirade. She could not simply make an excuse as she had with Sally, because she could not wedge in a complete sentence.
By the time Susan escaped, Dinah had rowed back across the pond, a cool breeze was springing up, Dr Alec had arrived from the city for a day off at last and his wife was plastered to his side. It was close to seven with the temperature dropping and the sky ridged with high clouds in ranks like waves coming in from the west. Tyrone appeared at her side and caught up Laurie with his other arm, taking them both into the house where he motioned to Celeste. She brought him a bottle of iced champagne, Roederer Cristal, and four glasses. Sally had followed at his nod.
He made it into a ceremony, all the glasses clinking. ‘To summer!’
‘To summer,’ Susan repeated. He had called her in, not Candida, not Dinah, not Betty Gore, not anyone else. Just his daughter, his secretary and herself, his family. Not even Willie was included. His best champagne in the fine crystal glasses that were as thin as the first faint sheet of ice that formed on the pond in January, offered to the women who were closest to him. ‘To summer.’ It was a toast, a promise, a summons. The minor disappointments of the day slid from her like discarded clothes. His eyes met hers across the glass and he smiled into her soul, the special friendship between them palpable, caressing, sweet as the mauve twilight filling the room from the French windows. Between all of them was a fine high civilized attention to each other, an amusement, a drawing together. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘To summer!’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
LAURIE
‘Why do I have to wait so long for the present? You make me wonder if there’s really a present,’ Laurie said. She and Jimmy were painting the bathroom, above the line of tile. He had recruited her to help him. Willie was in a panic about having enough pieces for his show the first week in August. Outside it was raining steadily, a sound like gravel on the roof and a lighter sound of drops hitting the pond.
‘I could make you wait till your birthday, so cultivate a little patience.’
‘You don’t know when my birthday is. How do you know it isn’t today?’
‘Your birthday’s in October.’ He leaned down smiling from the ladder.
‘How did you know?’
‘Never reveal a source.’
‘When is yours?’
‘Come on, you used to lord it over me that you were five months older. Some older woman! My sophisticated Laurie.’
‘I never will be, will I? New York kids think they know it all. Was I really obnoxious?’
‘Only on alternate days.’
‘Why do I have to wait for the present?’
‘Two reasons, I want your attention when I give it to you. It’s easier with the house emptied out. Second, I’m not sure Tyrone would be thrilled that I brought you back something so … let’s just say it’s a real present. If he saw it, you’d have to tell him where you got it. And if you didn’t, I’d feel hurt.’
‘Why would Tyrone mind? Susan’s always giving me presents.’
‘Tyrone thinks I’m a lowly carpenter. He doesn’t know I’ve taken over subcontracting the gallery, and don’t tell him. I know just who to get and they’ll come through for me because they’re buddies.’
He talked almost as if they were involved already and keeping it a secret from Tyrone – but he had never even kissed her, except a brotherly brush of the lips. Sometimes she worried that her over-heated imagination was imbuing his casual remarks with significance he never intended. A present withheld but tendered at the same time reminded her of birthdays, of Christmases, of times Tyrone would promise her a treat if she got a B average or if she would improve her backhand sufficiently to give him a good game. ‘Daddy’s gone now and so are the houseguests.’ She was sure she would be disappointed. It would be like the presents her mother got her, never quite as good as she had asked for, a knockoff instead of a designer sweater, done in acrylic rather than wool, in polyester instead of silk: things that were almost what she wanted, and thus twice as frustrating, a tawdry betrayal. It would be some trifle in bad taste and she would feel embarrassed for him.
At four o’clock he cleaned the brushes and they ran through the rain to the big house. He followed her in, shaking his head like a dog. ‘I’ll get cleaned up here.’ Without waiting for her assent he went upstairs ahead of her and turned into Tyrone’s bathroom.
After all, he knew the house perfectly well. She took a fast shower and put on a clean short-sleeved shirt. She started to put on her jeans and then thought better of it and put on a beige skirt, part silk, part linen. She dabbed a touch of Coco behind her ears and brushed her hair hard. As she was peering critically at herself, she saw him standing behind her in a madras robe of Tyrone’s. The box he held out was beautifully wrapped in rice paper with a gold flecked fish pattern, tied with a golden string. Her hand that took the small package quivered.
She was afraid to open it, to be disappointed, to feel embarrassed for him. But he was waiting. The bathrobe was long on him. Finally she eased the string off, tore the beautiful paper. It was in a box from a Seattle jeweller. Inside was a necklace of white gold links. On it was a white gold gull fashioned out of a few zigzags, with an opal for an
eye. ‘It’s beautiful! I can’t believe you got me this!’ She could tell it was real. Oh, Tyrone always gave her real stones, but they were unimaginatively set. This was a piece of art. She hooked the clasp and stared at the necklace against the white of her shirt.
‘It needs something black to show it off. Or skin.’ Casually he reached over her shoulder and unbuttoned her shirt, sliding it back and away. She sat in her camisole with the shirt loose on her shoulders and the necklace against the slight rise of her breasts. ‘I like it on you,’ he said. ‘I knew it was for you when I saw it. I was looking for something that wanted to be yours.’
‘I really love it,’ she said. Should she button her shirt? She did not dare. She sat frozen admiring the necklace until he lifted her to her feet. The robe was tied loosely. He was naked underneath. He drew the blouse the rest of the way from her shoulders and hung it on the doorknob, unzipped the skirt and led her forward out of it as he slid the camisole over her head. Most men fumbled at women’s clothes, at least in her experience. In a rapid gesture, kneeling and rising, he slid her panties down and then opened the robe and pulled her inside it, so that it closed around their naked bodies. She had a moment’s thought that they were naked together and she was committed to his will, and he had not even kissed her yet, when gathered into the robe and feeling his hot sleek body against her, they did finally kiss.
She was enclosed in the robe with him, his body smooth and warm and tight against her and the robe smelling of the Persian leather Tyrone used. Her breath caught in her chest like an opening clasp knife. She found herself squirming against him in a way that would have been embarrassing, except that he was holding her in a grip that did not ease for a moment, murmuring in her hair, ‘Yes, baby, baby, baby, it’s time. Oh, it’s time for us.’ He slid his fingers up into her and began to play with her. It had always taken her forever to come, but this time she came with his fingers. It had been so long, her body was so taut, it hurt a little to come.