by Marge Piercy
His bedroom led into his own bathroom in one direction, and into a dressing room in the other. She saved the dressing room for last. The bathroom was grass green and pale blue, a lively pleasant room as big as her bedroom at home. The basin was grey marble and the window was inlaid with panes of milky green glass. The cabinet was filled with patent and prescription medicines for upset stomach, for sleeplessness, for athlete’s foot and headaches. Nothing interesting, except a couple of leftover women’s cosmetics. He must never clear things out.
His walk-in dressing room was a party in itself, all those shoes laid out on wooden racks, his suits in plastic envelopes behind sliding glass doors, his shirts on hangers in their colour class, whites together, white on whites, greys, browns, blues. His sweaters were heaped in drawers. His ties were on racks that turned, as in a department store men’s section. His socks were arranged by colour in two drawers. His handkerchiefs were in wooden subcompartments within a drawer, linen with linen, silk with silk. Even his cuff links were sorted into grids, one pair to each little square.
She imagined walking into such a closet to select what she was wearing to dinner that evening. The Somebodies were coming, the Bromleys from Memorial Day. The far side of the closet was mostly empty. That was where Laurie’s boxes were stored, the ones Susan had promised to bring her, so she had a right to be here anyhow. She was dressing for dinner while Tyrone showered. He would not bellow off-key in the shower as Willie did. She had never even heard Tyrone whistle. He was a quiet man when he wasn’t speaking, a blessing, although Dinah beat every man Susan had ever known in noisemaking, finger popping, whistling, drumming with hands and random objects from sticks to forks, toe tapping, explosive lip noises, humming through the mouth and nose and outright loud singing, often without words.
Tuesday at four Susan was done with her meetings. It had been a frustrating two days. The year before they had said paisley was dead on its current resurrection, and now they wanted more paisley for next year, mixes of paisley and flowers that she found ill-construed, in what they called jewel colours and brown. They had just rediscovered brown. The new neutral. That and olive. Khaki. Drab. Military colours. Moreover, Mr di Vecchio too had dismissed half her designs and they had given her a deadline of Labor Day to turn in replacements.
She could conceivably have driven home at once and got there that night, but she had arranged to stay in New York a second night. Indeed, she was weary. Even in the air-conditioned apartment, the street noises were loud enough to make sleeping difficult. What she would have liked to do was to stay yet another day. Why not? She would tell Willie that she had one more meeting. He was wrapped up in his approaching show, only a week away, and busy the rest of the time with building. He would not miss her, and if he did, then he would act more appreciative when she got home.
Before she could feel guilty, she called him at supper time. He was not there, but Jimmy picked it up. ‘Hi, Mom. Dad’s eating out.’
‘Oh, who invited him?’
‘I think he’s just picking up a bite in town until he has to go before the Board of Appeals.’
‘I’ll be staying on for a day. One of my bosses didn’t get back from Saint Lucia till today, so I have to stick around tomorrow to see him. I’ll be back Thursday for sure. I hope your father isn’t upset.’
‘Don’t worry about it. Have you seen any good movies?’
‘I’ve just been going to meetings with them and then collapsing at night and going over my notes and my presentation.’
‘Well, take a little time for yourself. I’ll tell Willie you called.’
Jimmy could sometimes surprise her by his affection. She hung up feeling agreeably cared for. He was right, her sensitive son: she should take some time for herself. She did go shopping the next afternoon, because going out from the apartment and speaking to the doorman, having him call her a cab was part of the gorgeous routine of living there. The doormen knew her by now and treated her as a resident. The streets were simmering, the air felt like hot glue, but she hurried from air-conditioning to air-conditioning. Her bosses were pushing her around because she wasn’t constantly on the spot to defend herself. She would get far more respect from them if she too lived in the city. In some ways Willie and she had left New York sacrificing themselves for the children, so they would grow up in a healthy place. Why not return? Moving back would be good for Willie’s career; it was essential for hers. She could jump houses and do much better, if she knew the current market. She should be in the centre, not out on the periphery trying to second-guess. Tyrone knew hundreds of fascinating people, and soon she too would know them. Selling their house would give them a nest egg to invest. Tyrone could easily help them find a small easy-to-keep-up apartment, perhaps in one of his buildings. She was sure he would give them a break on price. Perhaps they could move by Christmas. It wasn’t impossible. She just had to start working Willie around to wanting to do it.
Tyrone was lonely. He clung to things that had belonged to Glenda. He was a driven man, frantically busy, always dashing off from one end of the world to the other, but at the core, he was alone. She would never leave Willie, of course not. Willie was a man who simply could not survive on his own. He was profoundly dependent on her. She loved Willie. If she no longer found him exciting romantically, that wasn’t shocking after a quarter century of marriage. Moreover, Willie just wasn’t growing. He needed to stretch himself. She loved him, but there was no doubt Willie’s shortcomings stood out less when he was not the only person she was devoting her energy to. In New York he would wake up intellectually.
She could welcome Tyrone more fully into her life and fit into his, beautifully, warmly. Tyrone had lent her his apartment, as if in an experiment so that she might see what it was like to be here, to live this way, and she had flourished. She had slipped into it as if it were tailored for her. Here during these precious days she had been truly happy. She felt as if she would return home, as she must, carrying with her some of that burnish of beauty and fine taste, some of that fine glow of well polished joy.
She was not leaving New York to rush back to the Cape, but as a strategic retreat in order to return in strength. Here was where she was going to be living soon. Manhattan was where she belonged.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
WILLIE
Willie was sprawled on the redwood settee, in conscious contrast to Tyrone, sitting opposite on a lounge chair. Tyrone had his crocodile attaché casé at heel, Donald dancing attendance around him. His back vibrated tension and energy six inches from the chair back. He was drinking gin and tonic as was Willie. Why did Willie always suspect Tyrone of drinking mostly tonic and giving him mostly gin during these verbal wrestling matches? Willie could hear his drawl stretching like Figaro just waking up and making himself twice his normal size. He always got very southern when he was being pushed, and Tyrone was trying to push him. His voice was getting more and more down-homey. Like a lot of people where he came from, he had several accents. His parents spoke with a southern rinse to their voices, but not anything like the way northerners put on what they thought was a drawl. But he had also been raised by Mona, and sometimes, as now, he spoke in her accent.
‘Surely you’re being a little naive about how to handle the local politicos,’ Tyrone said, making a gesture of scratching his palm. ‘Probably a small bribe, either in cash or merchandise. A present to the wife.’
‘It just don’t work that way round these parts.’
‘I’ve done business on five continents and one subcontinent, and it always works that way. It’s just a matter of finding the correct currency, something the locals want.’
Summer people always struck the folks who lived here as being deficient in manners, Willie thought. In a small town you had to have great tolerance and ongoing consideration of each other, or engage in endless bitter feuds. The lady behind the counter in the grocery store, the kid who pumped gas, the plumber who fixed your toilet were all people you would be facing daily for years
and whom you often had to count on, people who expressed opinions at town meeting and board hearings, so you responded to them as people rather than as robots or dumping grounds for loose emotions. Anyone you offended would get you back sooner or later. ‘Parking’s one hot issue in town. Traffic makes people’s blood boil. The number of parking spaces for a gallery just ain’t the same as residential, and that’s the current sticking point.’
‘What are we dealing with, a fisherman, a motel owner and a vendor of souvenir tee shirts? Don’t they understand we’re offering to bring a quality gallery in, one that will cater to people with real money to spend?’
‘Local people would like it better if it was something useful, like a dry cleaners. Everybody would appreciate not to have more cars beached like blackfish in gridlock in the town centre honking at each other.’
‘At least you finally managed to put the new roof on.’
‘It’s watertight and yare. You can count on that.’
‘What other progress have you made? At the slug’s pace you’re proceeding, is there anything to see yet?’
‘We’ve gutted the top two floors, except for stress bearing walls and structural beams. I’d like you to see the panelling we found on the ground floor under six layers of wallpaper. Oak in unusually wide boards. You should look it over before we touch it. Frankly it ought to be preserved.’
‘Sounds fascinating. I’ll drop by to look at it this week. So some slight progress has been made …’
Willie would not let himself lose his temper. He had done so once this summer, and it had given Tyrone an advantage. He preferred to slow down like a braced mule and let Tyrone wear himself out prodding him. He knew from what Jimmy passed on from Laurie that she didn’t plan to open till June. The roof repair and cedar shingling had been the critical outdoor tasks. In truth they could lay off until late fall, although Willie had no intention of dragging the job out that long. It was hot work inside the old Victorian. He’d get cracking when the weather crispened in September and finish by November.
Tyrone had the habit of pushing. He wanted to inspect the work because that made him feel properly in control. Willie had explained to Susan, unsuccessfully, that Tyrone’s working life was spent so distant from the reality of people doing physical labour, spent manipulating electronic images of shares and currencies, that he took pleasure in actually witnessing and attempting to boss around men working with visible tools.
Willie wouldn’t be hustled. The work was proceeding at a reasonable pace and to hell with Tyrone’s nastiness. Willie had his show to hang tonight, Johnny was arriving and tomorrow was his opening. Willie was taking the weekend off plus Monday, until Johnny left. He hardly ever saw his daughter.
Willie had not enjoyed building for Tyrone. He had said to Susan just the night before that Tyrone hadn’t got rich being generous with his money, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She was still grateful to Tyrone for letting her stay in his New York apartment, although Willie thought she could have insisted to Max that they put her up in a hotel, with them keeping her three days.
Tyrone had finally paid all he owed Willie on the boathouse and had got it through his head that Willie was adamant that nothing would go forward on the gallery until the money was in hand. He was not about to front the gallery for Tyrone. Now if fixtures were to be ordered or lumber picked up, Tyrone wrote the cheques with a minimum of haggling. That was how local builders worked, and he wasn’t going to make an exception for Tyrone, no matter what Susan said. He was laying too much out for the studio.
Susan had been in a good mood all week. She had even gone blackberry picking with Laurie, who told him privately she had already gone with Dinah and had the scars on her arms to prove it. Then Susan had put up blackberry jam with cinnamon and made a deep-dish blackberry pie, of which he had gobbled three pieces. She should be working on her designs, because several she had brought to New York had been rejected, but he was reluctant to interfere when she was happy. Let her enjoy the summer for a week or two. All the tourists did. The house was a different place when Susan was happy. She had made love with him twice this week. She had gone to town to see the gallery progress, had gone with him to Leroy’s opening and then taken off her shoes and walked with him arm in arm along the ocean under the full moon.
Susan had been so forthcoming since she’d come back from New York that he realized he hadn’t seen Dinah all week. While Susan was gone, he had eaten there every night and even stayed over once. Dinah was adamant that he tell Susan he was seeing her. She didn’t seem to understand she was asking for a storm of blood and thunder. Things were fine. Why make trouble? Still he was suddenly aware he had not seen her since Susan’s return.
When he had walked over to Tyrone’s, he had heard Dinah playing the piano, a tape recorder going too so that it sounded as if a whole group of musicians were at it. With the shell of the studio up, it was easy for him to hop across the yard without coming into Susan’s line of sight. He didn’t hear the piano going, so he assumed she was taking a break. He decided to stop by, checking first to make sure Jimmy was off with the truck in town.
Her kitchen was full of tomatoes, green and purple beans not yet frozen, green, yellow and red sweet and hot peppers. She was in the drying closet built into the antique fireplace, laying out herbs on screens that slid in and out of a frame the two of them had built. She did not hear him. When he slipped his arms around her waist, she squeaked with surprise but did not drop the basil.
She sat him down in the livingroom and brought him a beer. ‘So you’ve been over visiting our resident millionaire.’
‘He’s been trying to push me around. But when an irresistible object meets an immovable force, what happens? Nothing.’
‘Guess who he’s fucking.’
‘Donald.’
‘No, that blonde who wears her dresses cut down to her belly button. Candida MacIvor, the doctor’s wife.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m always in the woods. I see him going in her house when she’s alone and I see him coming out. I have a dirty mind.’
‘You don’t know for sure, then. Maybe he just likes to talk to her the way he likes to talk to Susan.’
‘Always when her husband’s in the city, sure. No, I haven’t snuck up and peeked in the window. Ugh! Although I saw two red-shouldered hawks fucking in the spring, I forgot to tell you – we weren’t speaking.’ She gave him a minute description of what she had witnessed while squatting in the bushes, the actual act accomplished in fifteen seconds but the story taking five minutes. By the time she finished, Willie was aroused, but Dinah braced her hand flat against his chest.
‘So have you talked to Susan?’
‘Susan’s in a good mood since she got back from New York. Why ruin it?’
‘If she’s in a bad mood, you say why get her depressed. Now she’s in a good mood, don’t rock the boat. Willie, I can’t go on like this. I need my life cleaned up.’
‘For Chrissake, Dinah, I’m not something you stepped in. You have a connection with me whether or not Susan ever speaks to you again.’
Dinah evaded him, putting the table between them. She stood with her hands on her hips. ‘But whether I exercise that connection has to have something to do with Susan, honey, any fool can see that.’
‘Hello?’
Dinah and Willie swung around at the same time. It was Johnny’s voice, deep for a woman, husky. She was standing outside the door to the livingroom, open but with the screen door latched. Nobody ever came in that way. Dinah had to move a rocking chair to open it for her.
‘I parked and got out, not quite sure was this the old homestead or a strip mine. Even the old rose arbour? I was just moseying around surveying the damage when I heard your voices.’ Johnny kissed Willie on the cheek and Dinah on the mouth. She looked tall, gaunt, handsome, wearing for travelling a purple halter, black leather shorts and an unzipped sweat suit top for a cardigan, enormous earrings in the form of dice, like proles hung
on their rearview mirrors. Willie always started worrying when he saw her, as if anything at all might happen to her.
‘I was just looking for Jimmy,’ Willie said, caught off stride and wondering if Johnny had heard his argument with Dinah. ‘I thought he was working on the addition here, but he’s off with Laurie.’
‘I’m not your keeper, don’t make excuses for me.’ Johnny swung around to gaze back through the screen door. ‘You guys have really chewed up the countryside.’
‘All I wanted was a washer and a dryer,’ Dinah said bitterly. ‘How about a beer?’
‘I’ll drink to that.’ Johnny plunked down on the couch. ‘Can I stay here tonight?’
‘You’ll have to sleep on what you’re sitting on.’
‘How come? Isn’t Jimmy boffing little miss vinegar across the water?’
‘You work it out with him,’ Dinah said. ‘I provide sheets and sympathy.’
‘Have you checked in with your mother yet?’ Willie asked.
‘I figured we’d schedule the first set for after you arrived. We need a referee.’
‘Don’t look for trouble, Johnny. Let’s make this visit a good one. Don’t start with your mother like a kid poking a stick into a hive to see how the bees react. You know how she’ll react. Let’s be kind to each other.’ His head rang with old wars, Johnny and Susan fighting about clothing, about school, about drugs and reputed drugs, about the telephone, loudness of music, neatness of room, fights about staying out too late, fights about staying out all night, fights about eating and not eating, drinking and not drinking, smoking and not smoking, fights about boys, about girlfriends, about rudeness, about privacy, about taste, about each woman’s vital image of herself.