Summer People

by Marge Piercy

  Between Dinah and herself was now a desert, a wasteland, an industrial zone studded with tools and piles of lumber and cement blocks, something no sane person would try to cross in the dark. She rarely saw Dinah. She did not even get a chance to talk loudly to the cats to show Dinah that she was really a warm friendly person, to pick up Tosca or Figaro and fuss them up and kiss them. Dinah was keeping both cats inside. Had Dinah caught on to her game? That was absurd. A person could fuss over a pussycat without meaning anything ulterior.

  They had to keep Bogey tied up. After the third time he had managed to get down into one of the septic pits wihout being able to get back out, Willie had decreed he was to spend the time till the health agent came and inspected on the end of a rope tied to a sturdy red maple on the shore. Bogey howled a lot, but at least he didn’t fall down the pit a fourth time, or however he ended up twice in theirs and once in Dinah’s cement bunker.

  It was infuriating that Dinah should decide to build just because they were enlarging. It was pure competitiveness. Nonetheless, when she did run into Dinah, she made a point of asking about the progress of her addition as if she could not simply look out and see. She liked the stifled look that convulsed Dinah’s features on the few occasions Susan managed to make their paths cross.

  She was annoyed with herself for her moments of weakness lately when she wished she could talk to Dinah. Once Tyrone arrived, unless Jimmy and Laurie had between them managed to despoil the summer, she would not feel this awkward vacancy. No doubt she had permitted the relationship to drag on so long because having another woman close was convenient, cosy. Whatever Dinah was and wasn’t, at least she could be talked to when she could be broken free of her self-involvement. She was a mature woman to whom Susan could confide things Laurie would not understand and Willie didn’t know existed.

  For instance, when she was younger, every time her period was late, she would convince herself she was pregnant. Dinah would be there to rationalize her fears away and soothe them into small tremors. Now that she was older, when her period was late, she feared menopause. Susan’s periods had always tended toward irregularity except while she had been on the pill, so that she seemed to have something to worry about every month. She felt that once she passed into menopause, somehow Willie would know and lose interest in her. She would gain weight. Her hair would fall out. She would pose as a woman, but it would be a pretence because secretly she would no longer be a real woman.

  She had no symptoms, no hot flushes, whatever those were. However, her period was late again. Every day she thought ten times that her period had started, and every time she was dry as sandpaper. Yesterday she had asked Willie as if casually, if she looked different to him. He had frowned at her, staring, and then asked if she had cut her hair.

  Finally that afternoon the health agent came, spent all of five minutes looking over the plots and departed. By five, Tommy had filled in both holes and finally she could see Dinah’s house again from ground level, and once again they had a usable drive. Willie came out of his studio to stand beside her and watch.

  ‘Now may be she can bring herself to stop parking on our lawn.’

  ‘What lawn? We haven’t had a lawn for two weeks.’ Tommy had dug a great hole where they had intended the new septic system to be, but he had hit clay. He had filled it in, but now the surface was loose sand.

  ‘Is she going to go on using our driveway forever and ever?’

  Willie took her by the arm and walked her into the house for privacy. ‘Susan, honey, both houses have always shared that there drive.’ When he got excited, his voice always got more southern.

  She almost smiled at the melody while frowning at the content. ‘That’s like saying there’s always been slavery. That doesn’t make it right. The drive is on our land. She ought to build her own drive.’

  ‘If she does, we’ll have to. Have you ever looked at our plot? It goes at a very sharp slant. Yes, part of the drive is on our land and so is part of the quince hedge. However, the drive starts on Dinah’s land. Both lots are parallelograms, not squares.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So don’t say anything. She thinks she’s parking on our land too. She apologized to me twice. But she wasn’t. Understand?’

  Susan nodded, staring out the window at the disputed drive.

  Willie said insistently. ‘So you’re not going to say a word to her about the drive. Right? This addition is costing us more than we ought to be spending. Let’s not make it worse.’

  ‘I won’t say a word.’ She privately thought Willie was timid about money. She would work harder in the fall. Maybe they’d ask Tyrone to help them find some little pied-à-terre, a small cute apartment in the city, and sell this and have money left over to invest. Willie had been making loads of money remodelling the boathouse and now the house in town. He always seemed to feel that if he did not poor-mouth to her, she would run out and buy something glamorous and expensive like jewellery or furs – she who spent less on herself than any woman she knew in the business.

  That evening Tyrone did call, finally. He told her stories about his trip to Japan that would normally have charmed her, but she could scarcely concentrate. Then he started asking questions about everyone on the pond. ‘Is Candida MacIvor around? And how about Alec? They seemed like such a pleasant couple.’

  ‘Tyrone, I have something disturbing to tell you.’

  ‘Disturbing in what way?’

  ‘Laurie and Jimmy have got involved with each other.’

  ‘Involved. Jimmy.’ He seemed to be trying to balance some complicated equation. ‘She hasn’t mentioned this to me.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s important,’ Susan rushed on. ‘I’m sure she doesn’t think it’s a big enough matter to bother you with.’

  ‘Perhaps … But she’s moved into the boathouse, hasn’t she? I don’t imagine that’s big enough for two.’

  ‘Oh, they aren’t living together, Tyrone, I promise you that. It’s not anything that important.’

  ‘I’ll be down shortly. Laurie said you were helping her with curtains. That’s sweet of you. She needs to keep busy at small useful tasks. She’s a convalescent, Susan, recovering from a violent shock. We must coddle her.’

  ‘I know that, Tyrone, but –’

  ‘Of course you understand. I’ll see you very, very soon.’

  When she told Willie it had been Tyrone, he asked at once, ‘Did he say he’s sending the cheque? He owes us thirty-five hundred on the boathouse, and we need five thousand to proceed on the gallery. I wrote him that. I called twice, but I only got his secretary.’

  Susan frowned. ‘I have nothing to do with your business arrangements with Tyrone. You should have said something when I was on the phone.’

  ‘You always take his calls upstairs.’

  ‘Willie! You sound jealous.’

  ‘You know how little I’m the jealous type.’

  ‘Umm. Maybe you’re changing. We all change, blessed be.’ She relented. After all, he was finally building her a studio, one reason he needed the money. ‘He’s coming up right away. I’m sure you can catch him then.’

  She happened to see Tyrone’s Mercedes pass from an upstairs window. She had decided to tidy up that afternoon, and she was just dusting Jimmy’s room. She was trying to invent a way to get Jimmy to move back – after all, he must miss his things, although he freely came and took what he wanted a couple of times a week. Still, he could not possibly be comfortable at Dinah’s, staying in that tiny room that had been Mark’s study, a low cubbyhole under the eaves still crammed with Mark’s papers in boxes. It was a monument to Dinah’s widowhood in a way Susan could never understand.

  Tyrone’s secretary Sally was driving Tyrone’s Mercedes, with him in the back seat, a portable desk on his lap. His assistant Donald was driving an Olds with the maid riding in front, some large piece of equipment occupying the back. The entourage passed, slowing to view the devastation, and then speeded up into the woods – although nobod
y except that crazy electrician drove the road at a speed above twenty.

  She spun from the window. Cleaning lost its appeal. She had things under control. She decided to sketch the lilies she had picked in what remained of their garden. Her designs originated in something seen or remembered or as now directly studied. Then she began altering the proportions and creating a design. Something would click in that initial literal sketch and she would be off. She had a scarlet spray of lilies she had cut, with some buds not yet open over waxy dark leaves. The anthers were dark brown but she played with first gold, then light green, then ivory. That was it. Ivory. She began to bring out veining in the petals. A suggestion of ivory lace over red. No leaves. Scarlet, ivory, something blue. A butterfly, cobalt blue, tiny. Now she had the colour scheme. Two small butterflies with ivory dots in their wings. Red antennae. Coming along. Would she mention to Tyrone that she had been hurt Laurie had not chosen one of her designs? Perhaps not the best beginning to the summer, complaining. Unless it would be a way of bonding with him if he was annoyed at Laurie. Best to wait and see.

  She would not call yet, no. She would give him time to talk with Laurie. She had gone over yesterday to air out the big house and fill it with what flowers she had. She wished she could slip into Dinah’s garden with some shears, but it would hardly go unobserved, as the front-end loader was back playing with sand to make a foundation base and the foundation men were setting up wooden forms. It was annoying, but it seemed as if Jimmy and Willie had coordinated both projects, so that everything that they did, Dinah also had done on the same day. It was not at all cute. It united them in a way she found tacky.

  Tyrone called her promptly the next morning, around eleven. She was just back from her morning swim. He sounded extremely annoyed. ‘I warned you about Laurie’s situation, Tyrone,’ she said placatingly. ‘I hope you were able to communicate with her.’

  ‘What’s going on over there? I heard banging and shouting and engines roaring at seven this morning. I had them complete the boathouse before I arrived so I wouldn’t have to put up with a high noise level. I come here to get away from the city, not to haul it around with me.’

  ‘Dinah’s having an addition put on her house. And we’re building a studio.’

  ‘And you had to wait until I arrive to have it done? I think that’s extremely inconsiderate. You had all year to invite the local nail-bangers in for a ball.’

  ‘Tyrone, that’s not fair. Willie and Jimmy were rushing to finish the boathouse so it would be done when you wanted it.’

  ‘Why aren’t they working on the gallery?’

  ‘You have to talk to them. I don’t involve myself in their building, you know that.’

  ‘It’s extremely inconsiderate to the rest of us on the pond, that’s all I can say.’ Tyrone hung up without even suggesting they go for a walk or get together for coffee or anything.

  On one hand she felt mortified. It did seem as if they were making a hideous mess and commotion. She slept in earplugs, to keep out the shriek of the birds in the morning and the clatter Willie made showering and dressing and getting breakfast. She had not really noticed the noise pollution they were creating. Perhaps it could qualify as a nuisance.

  But building had been going on at Tyrone’s for months, and at the MacIvors’ for months before that. Their project was no noisier than either of those. She felt wronged. She became convinced, as she sat staring at the sketch that no longer held the slightest interest, that he could not really be upset about the construction. He was furious about Jimmy and felt unable to say to her how little he liked that relationship; therefore he had displaced his anger onto the noise that wafted across the lake to him. In addition to every other mortification, she discovered that her period had finally started, today, when she was already aggravated and tense. She stormed around her bedroom pulling out tampons and pads in a tantrum.

  She must speak to Tyrone. She must make him understand that she was on his side, that she had in no way connived at this unlikely coupling and had in fact tried to prevent it. She must remind him how she had urged him to think of a suitable boyfriend for Laurie. She must catch him as if by accident and reestablish that warm open caring bond between them that had existed for years, that had been growing even deeper of late. She remembered again the toast to summer in his office, just the two of them and Laurie, toasting in exquisite crystal and perfectly iced dry champagne the summer that was now upon them. She must recapture with him the beautiful intense glow of civilized friendship that was perhaps the highest form of union possible between a man and a woman, to which were sex added, no marriage could represent a more perfect connection.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  WILLIE

  Willie and Jimmy had been to every meeting of the Board of Appeals, the Board of Health and the Planning Board for the last two months. They even had developed opinions on all the other pending cases, because they were getting educated in zoning law. They had started being so intimate with the boards because Tyrone wanted that gallery in a previously residential building in town. That involved problems of a legal septic system at a legal distance from neighbouring wells and neighbouring septic tanks. It meant providing adequate off-street parking. It involved persuading neighbours that a change of use would not mean more traffic and noise.

  Their intimacy had flourished because they needed variance after variance and special permit after special permit to carry on with the two additions. Willie was perfectly aware that if he was not putting up a studio that was only quasi-legal, Susan as a complaining abutter would probably have tried to prevent Dinah from putting on her dubious addition. But they were supporting each other, Jimmy representing Dinah and Willie representing himself and Susan, but also helping Jimmy present Dinah’s case. Basically their best argument was that their weird early nineteenth-century lot divisions made complying with current regulations impossible. The boards were more sympathetic to them than to Tyrone because they were not changing use, not bringing in more traffic, but just rendering both houses more modern, more livable, actually more in keeping with present codes – and, of course, because they were real year-round working residents.

  Willie and Jimmy were getting along fine. He liked feeling tight with his son and he was proud of himself that he hadn’t let Susan drag him into her quarrel. They enjoyed the hearings and gossiping afterward over drinks with the other builders about board decisions and who was developing what land where. Willie liked to listen to people talk about their fields of expertise. He liked to find out what was happening, so when he was returning from the supermarket and saw a new sand road carved through the woods, he knew that it was a doctor’s house on an enormous lot – a house sized like a motel – or that it was a new subdivision pried into twelve odd-shaped lots of three quarters of an acre apiece. Jimmy was friendly with all the younger guys who worked construction. Willie liked going into the hangouts with his son and seeing him greeted and backslapped. They would sit down with Jimmy’s high school buddy George who was a local cop and hear about the tourist who had driven through the McBees’ living room at two a.m. and whose first words to the astonished family was, Is this the way to Hyannis? They would sit down with Wendy from the rescue squad and hear about heart attacks and crashes.

  He had also discovered that talking about septic systems was one of the great universal topics. Everybody had septic problems or had just had them or was anticipating having them. It was better than the weather for an instant conversation. All he had to do to pass a social fifteen minutes was bring it up, whether in the post office, Soiiza’s, the liquor store, the bank, the Sandspit or in the street. Sometimes they even talked about it from rolled down window to window, two pickups heading in different directions and stopping for a chat in the middle of the street to block traffic with the summer people leaning on their horns before and behind.

  Everybody in town knew they weren’t pushing hard for the gallery at the moment. Willie didn’t like working for people who dragged out pa
yment. He had to front the bills in order to get the supplies and he had to pay the subcontractors. The last person he ever wanted to stiff or make wait too long was somebody he might need the next week to come in and fix his own electricity or pump his septic tank. If he was dealing with a local buyer, he would simply say, I need eight hundred to go down to the lumberyard and pick up the windows. Tyrone was the worst, because he was in Tokyo or Milan half the time, and he was protected by a twenty-foot hedge of secretaries and personal assistants. Willie was not proceeding any further until Tyrone paid for the work on the boathouse and put up money for the materials list Jimmy had drawn up for the gallery. In the meantime Willie was dividing his time between trying frantically to finish enough new pieces for his opening and getting on with the garage-studio.

  Basically once the outer walls were up and the roof was on, he could relax and proceed with the rest when he had the time. Susan was satisfied that she was finally getting her studio; she never did much work in summer, anyhow. She was too social. He had full credit from her for having started the project. She had been very affectionate lately. In fact their sex life had improved at once when Jimmy moved out.

  However, it would have been a lot more convenient if Jimmy hadn’t moved into Dinah’s. It seemed to Willie when he started to solve one problem, another popped up. Jimmy’s presence there had had the advantage that it put Dinah’s house legally back on his personal map. He could reasonably go next door to consult his son. The trouble was that his son was often there to be consulted. He tried to keep track of Jimmy’s time with Laurie. Unfortunately for him, they usually spent evenings and nights together. What he could pry out of that was that if he appeared early in the morning, Jimmy was still at Laurie’s, Dinah was awake but Susan was not.