by Marge Piercy
‘Dinah, either I’m successful and I make money and people make a fuss, or I’m unsuccessful and I make a rotten living teaching in some dull place and having private students on the side, like your mother. Is that how you think I should live?’
No, she wanted to shout, remembering how glorious he was onstage. That wasn’t what she meant, not at all. Who would want to deny herself the opportunity to watch him soar and dip acrobatic as a tern over the Bay. ‘There’s nothing wrong with how you are with fans, Itzak. You don’t wake up at night in a sweat craving more applause. I’m concerned with my own lumpy self, and how I take being around it when it’s not directed at me.’
‘You don’t have to go on the road with me. Usually it’s a bum idea. I’m crazed and all I do is practice, perform and do the publicity they require.’ He sighed, for a moment looking suddenly weary, not because he was tired, but because he was remembering in his mind and his body a fatigue with which he was altogether too acquainted.
Once again she felt they shared a physical being, as if their bodies or their nervous systems had begun to overlap, to intermingle, like the root systems of two trees growing near each other. There was a bodily identification beginning with him that was new to her. That had not been an aspect of her intimacy with Mark: he was too much older, too lean and whiplike in his body, tight and taut and inturned.
As Itzak looked out to sea and then back to her, she took in at once the fine droplets on his dark curls, the sombre beauty of his eyes, the almost silly and perfect cleft in his chin, and she realized in despair and relief that she loved him. It was something stronger than she was used to feeling. Still knowing that made her situation no easier. What did love striking hard mean? Destruction? The loss of autonomy? Terrible vulnerability? That she could be entered, occupied, crushed? Or that she would be truly companioned, an intimacy of ambiguous depths? That she would found a new family with him or that she would founder? Was this passion an irrelevant allurement?
A fine rain hung in the air, heavier than mist but not quite droplets. She stepped on a pad of cow dung and slipped. He caught her by the arm. They climbed up to the white Victorian lighthouse, walking separately but close together, their hands occasionally brushing. Whenever they touched, no matter how accidentally, desire rippled deep in her. For all the doubts that stirred her brain, her body no longer doubted him at all. Her body trusted him, responded to him more strongly than it ever had to anybody else or likely might again. How to weigh such a response?
‘Have you ever thought that perhaps part of my appeal for you might be that I haven’t jumped all over you?’
‘Sure, in the beginning. By now, your unwillingness to commit is driving me to the brink. I want to get on with our life together or separately.’
‘Couldn’t it be sometimes together and sometimes separately? It seems to me it would be that way anyhow.’
‘Of course. But the physical separation has nothing to do with commitment. Once a commitment is made, we can work on terms, on how to manage our lives, our careers, our needs. That’s the point we’re failing to get to.’ He swung around and took hold of her shoulders, holding hard.
‘I love you, Itzak. It has nothing to do with any lack of love.’
‘It has to do with how strong you really think you are.’
‘Oh, dirty pool!’ She pulled away. She had said she loved him, and he had paid no attention at all. Had he noticed? She wanted an acknowledgement. She wanted him to answer her. Instead he took her hand as they walked on the brink of the cliff, the seabirds screeching below them, the sea smashing the rocks. Cows were pastured on the high centre, and she wondered what kept them from walking off the cliffs. Perhaps just common sense. She said resentfully, ‘I’m supposed to have to prove how strong I am.’
‘It would test both of us. Can’t you imagine how many easier relationships I could find? You’re a gritty woman. Addictive but problematic.’
‘Now who’s found the worm in the apple?’
‘I don’t miss seeing that we’re going to have some hard times with each other, that it’ll be raw and exhausting as often as it’s warm and wonderful.’ He sat down on a rock, his hands on his spread knees, looking levelly at her. ‘I walk into a party like the one we went to Sunday. It’s full of women more beautiful than you are, younger, more fashionable. Women I would enjoy fucking a couple of times and enjoy talking to maybe once. I know how rare it is to be able to get into that kind of conversation with a friend that goes on for years and years and just continues underneath everything the way the blood goes on through the arteries whatever you’re doing, till you die.’ He rose and went past her, standing looking out to sea where dim shapes – Ireland, the Isle of Man – floated like fallen bluish clouds.
She ordered herself to listen and not to give way to the blip of jealousy and even pain that he could say other women were more attractive than herself to him in any way. It was absurd to feel such jealousy, and yet she did. He gazed down at the rocks far below. ‘In some ways we could be closer than I was to my wife. We have more in common. We communicate better. You and I could have an extraordinary intimacy.’
‘I was close to Susan. We talked every day for ten years. There’s something in me that turned her off, that went numb to her, that couldn’t really feel what she needed or wanted.’
‘How close were you? How close can you be to anybody if music is your life and they have no feeling for music?’
‘Itzak, this death wasn’t like Mark’s. When Mark died, it was the culmination of a process of dying that had gone on for a year and a half. When it finally came, it was awful but merciful.’ She came to stand beside him, pressing herself to his side. ‘But Susan’s death is abrupt and bizarre and stupid. I can’t even believe it yet, let alone accept it.’
He pulled away from her. ‘You’ll end up living with Willie because you feel guilty about Susan.’
‘No!’ she said. ‘I don’t know. It still hurts to think about it.’
‘But it hurts me to be kept hanging. You have to commit or let go. I care about my music as much as you care about yours. I want a core relationship, I want solidity. I’m willing to work at it, but I want it in place. I don’t find shopping around amusing. I’m sick to death of feeling uprooted.’
She had a sudden premonition of him closing himself to her. He would be a stranger, someone whose discs she picked up in record stores, someone whose concerts she might attend every few years. She was afraid. ‘I’m used to behaving simply and I’m not very good at figuring out what I want when it isn’t immediately clear. I’m trying!’
‘Sorrow is a reasonable response when your friend dies, estranged from you. Guilt isn’t. You’re not the one who refused to reconcile.’
‘But I do feel guilty.’
‘Because of your father you feel you have to keep everyone alive.’
‘I feel as if my life is this vast amorphous pile of junk I can’t straighten out, and I can’t figure out where to begin.’
‘You’d better begin by figuring out whether you want me, because I’m not going to wait longer while you decide. When I get back – it’ll be just after Yom Kippur, which I mean to spend in London – you’re giving me an answer finally, no buts, no maybes. Commitment or good-bye.’
He said that to her grimly and he meant it, she sensed how strongly he meant it, yet he did not sulk. A few minutes later they were scrambling up the path that rose and fell, swung around clefts, corkscrewed up, always keeping to the cliff tops at or just a step back from the brink. On the plateau cows and calves were grazing in a rocky field. The wind was tattering the fog. Through rents, a dark blue sky glittered briefly. They ate apples from his pockets and sucked butterscotch candies. When they cut inland to the Iron Age fort to sit on the low rounded overgrown ramparts and drink coffee from the small thermos the hotel had lent them, the grass was a green so deep and bright, it seemed to rub off on the eyeballs. Was she full of joy because she liked the landscape and liked walking and like
d eating good food, or was she happy because she was doing so with this man? It was tedious always to be turning on herself and trying to figure it out. He was right, she must think clearly about her life, she must make decisions and put her house in order. That he did not withdraw when he gave her that ultimatum made it all the harder to believe she could continue to jolly him along. He wasn’t to be got around or distracted.
Rosh Hashonah began the evening she got home. Between then and Yom Kippur, she must sort herself out. The task that Itzak had set her, the holidays emphasized. They would give her a framework for examination of her beliefs and her actions. For Itzak, for Willie, for all her dead, her father and Susan and Mark, for herself, she must strive to be clear. Her possibilities had irrevocably changed, and she must make choices that would result in a life necessarily different no matter which way she moved forward out of her long impasse. She must sit in rigorous judgement and put her mind and then her life in order, as the holiday season demanded.
Chapter Forty-Nine
WILLIE
Willie stayed in Minneapolis for a week, but then he started feeling he had to get home. His daughter ate late – mostly take-out and snack foods – and stayed up late. Her loft offered little privacy, for it was one big room. He enjoyed going around with her and meeting other artists, he liked seeing a lot of her work. He helped her with framing and tried to cook for her and her boyfriend Aldo, who was awkward with him. He made sure to take long walks every day at a time he thought they might like to go to bed together, but it was uncomfortable. Even though he dreaded going home, he was getting tired and cranky. He needed his own things and his daily schedule. He had to figure out how to live now that Susan was gone. He could not remain with Johnny, peripheral, irrelevant, rootless.
His house felt dusty. The last of summer had passed. The Virginia creeper was crimson, the tomato plants hung with their last glut. Jimmy had finished Dinah’s addition, but instead of moving into the new bedroom, he resumed sleeping in his old room. Bogey was sick. He had been throwing up and then refusing to eat. Willie took him to the vet, who said he was suffering from extreme depression. Willie began to bring Bogey upstairs at night, letting him sleep on the foot of the bed. He took the dog for long walks. Dealing with the dog’s depression seemed some kind of tonic for his own. Dinah was off for a week in Scotland with Itzak Raab, whom she was still seeing.
Willie knew he had to do something about that guy, because he was taking up more and more of Dinah’s time and attention, but he felt too low to mobilize himself. Jimmy was blue, just like him. Laurie had gone to the city and Jimmy said that was over. Willie knew Jimmy was missing Susan too, but they tried to steer away from mentioning her, as they might avoid a deep pothole that could break an axle. They were both lost souls. Most mornings they had taken to going into town for breakfast, but he tried to make a real supper every evening. Today he broiled sirloin steaks. They both needed little treats. ‘Laurie will be back. She’ll come up holidays and summers.’
‘I am not some local helper you call up when you arrive. Call the plumber, the electrician, the housecleaners and the local stud service. No thanks. She’s not that much fun.’
He had a brief urge to tell Susan, See, I told you it would fade away by itself if we kept our mouths shut. ‘Are we really all done at Dinah’s?’
‘Sure. And now I don’t need a room there anymore. I’d sooner live with you. What a boondoggle. Tyrone took us for a ride and I wasted the summer while we were in the permit process playing with Dinah’s house.’
Willie put his elbows on the table. ‘And what am I supposed to do with the thing in the yard?’
‘Why don’t we just finish it off in one storey for a garage? We can’t make it a rental unit. There’s no plumbing, and we’d never get the permits.’
‘We did okay on Tyrone on the boathouse, but we got skinned on the gallery.’
Jimmy was silent for a minute. Then he said smugly, ‘We may end up doing that renovation.’
Willie took his head out of his hands and stared at Jimmy. ‘No way.’
‘Where there’s a will. I have been getting to know the son, Bob Sampson.’
‘What does getting to know mean?’
‘Come on, after all those years of Mother and Dinah in the sack, you’re not going to turn homophobic on me.’
‘What about AIDS?’
‘Have you ever heard of safe sex? I would have married Laurie. I really would have. I liked her just fine, and I knew how to make her happy. Bob is a hell of a lot easier. All he wants is a scene or two. He likes me. He likes you. He likes quality work.’
‘This wasn’t necessary.’
‘Nobody else needs to be read into the picture. We were doing the renovation. We’ll go on doing the renovation.’
‘You don’t have to fuck any random landlord who might give us a job.’
‘You use what you’ve got. I need to get established here. I have plans. Getting blown by some rich kid a couple of times is a pretty easy way to get a job, frankly.’
‘But you just don’t have to use yourself that way, Jimmy, you don’t! We’re not starving. We’re not that hard up. We never would be.’
‘Bob’s nice enough. Like everybody else, he wants people to care about him. You don’t understand. If somebody’s attracted to me and they show it, I tend to like them. After all, they’re paying me a compliment.’
‘But you can’t just roll over for everyone who whistles.’
‘Don’t give me any trouble about it, Willie. I need that job. I saw how to get it back. Laurie acted like a creep. I’m a forgiving sort – I’d still take Lisa back if she asked me – but I’m no serf you can summon to the castle when you breeze in.’
‘She really hurt you.’
‘She pissed me off, royally. I hope I get a chance to make her feel like shit sometime. I would find that truly satisfying.’ Jimmy got up and whistled to Bogey. ‘I’ll take him for a little extra romp around the pond. Didn’t the vet say we should exercise him till he drops?’
‘That’s supposed to give him an appetite.’
‘It gives me one.’ Jimmy put on his leather jacket and went out, followed by the dog.
Willie cleaned up, scrubbing the plates. How could Jimmy sell himself for a damned carpentry job? Laurie was an idiot to have let Tyrone bust up her relationship. Jimmy was weird sometimes, but he was a good kid finally – fiercely loyal to his family. He was forgiving, as he said. Hardworking. But Jimmy’s view of the world was not that different from Dinah’s tomcat Figaro. He had the same level of morality.
Willie adored his daughter and his son, but they amazed him, how individual and spiky and strange they were. They seemed to him as exotic and as beautiful as adults as they had when he had first seen each of them, multicoloured orchids waxy and squalling and blood-streaked. He realized he was so caught up in Jimmy that he had not thought to miss Susan for several hours. That was the longest he had gone without thinking about her.
He could imagine that some people would tend that pain, but he wanted only to close the door on it. It would not go away, but he wanted it to sink out of his awareness. He was afraid to feel as much pain as he did. He feared total disability, that his life would cease and he would lie limp and spent. He felt as if Susan had been dead for months instead of weeks and he was still treading in place. He wanted Dinah with him, not off in Scotland. It wasn’t fair she had run away, run from his pain, from her own. Being alone just didn’t work for him. It turned every day into a ghost town of the emotions, streets laid out, buildings erected for the use of those who had vanished.
A letter had come from a French curator, who had some kind of position with the Ministry of Culture or at least was putting together a show under their auspices, requesting slides. Now the curator was writing again, definitely interested in that South Africa piece Willie had done in the spring, the nation tree of death. The curator wanted it for a show in January. A big one. Haccke would have a major installation in it; th
ey were showing a huge new painting by Kiefer. The idea of arranging to ship sculpture that big to Paris made him want to go to sleep. It all seemed too difficult. He stuck the letter up on the refrigerator under a magnet in the form of a ceramic whale that Susan had bought at a crafts fair. He would think some other time about shipping a piece the size of a stuffed elephant across the Atlantic.
The next morning, he went out to his studio to look at the piece in question, stowed away since his show in August. His studio was cold and damp. He poked around for a few minutes. It hardly seemed worthwhile to start a fire. It was Saturday, but Allie Dove was out on the pond hauling in Tyrone’s raft with the help of Ozzie. The day was silver grey, the pond like a puddle of melted lead. He found he did not much like to look at it. He turned his back on the Dove brothers and the raft and retreated to the kitchen. A lot of the summer people were up for the weekend, for the weather report had been overly optimistic, but Tyrone and Laurie had not appeared. He was glad of that, for he hoped Laurie would stay away until Jimmy had a new girlfriend. Jimmy needed to be married, there was no doubt of that. Of course, he still was. Willie often forgot that Jimmy was still married to Lisa and in fact had a child. A grandchild he had never seen. He had a sudden urge to see that child, but he was not about to inflict himself on Lisa. However, he thought to himself, maybe I will call her up. She always liked me. See how she’s doing. Why not? I’m sure Jimmy never got around to writing her about Susan.
Jimmy popped in. ‘Want me to go into town for the mail, or do you want to do it this morning?’
Both of them liked that task, and sometimes they jockeyed for position, to be the one who was free at the optimum moment. It was eleven-thirty and the mail would be in the boxes. The advantage of going, besides being the one who opened all the mail and read it first, the one who went through the catalogues and third class mail and tossed the ones he did not find attractive and brought home only the junk mail that intrigued him, was that the post office was always a social scene. He could count on running into two to four friends per trip.