by Marge Piercy
She thought that quite likely from a rational point of view, but her body flinched. Her body gave her first a stomachache, then intestinal cramps. It said, you’re trying to kill me. It said, oh sorrow! It said, I want Itzak. Her body was too hot and then too cold and then it made a false flu of aches and gripes.
She put down her flute and went to the windows again. Tosca planted herself right in front of her, putting her paws on Dinah’s shoulders and staring into her face. ‘Right, Tosca,’ she muttered, ‘it’s a hard knot to unravel.’ She did want Itzak. It was something fierce and heavy pulling on her. It was something she wanted to give way to, but that did not mean she should do so. Wanting comes and wanting goes, she thought, but truly she could not think of a time in her life when that had been true. Her years of casual sex had been governed more by others’ desires for her than by any particular desperate wanting on her part. In fact most of those partners had been unmemorable, interchangeable, forgotten unless unusually proficient or inept. She had never stopped wanting Mark, even when he was too ill to make love. She had not stopped wanting Willie, although if she chose Itzak, she could control that desire. She had never stopped wanting Susan.
But choosing Itzak would disrupt her life. She would have to be in the city more, not something she would pick in itself. Would she refuse Itzak, because the relationship was less convenient? That would be cowardly, mean. Round and round she went, digging herself into a pit that just grew deeper. Her deadline had come. Tomorrow she must meet Itzak’s plane at Logan.
At four she gave up her futile attempts to concentrate and went next door. She was surprised to find no one in the house. When she went to the studio, she was even more surprised to find Candida still there. Since eleven? Candida and Willie were building a large crate. Willie was ebullient. ‘Candy figured out how we can ship my piece to Paris. I was ready to forget about it, but she stayed on it. She talked to the curator – she speaks French.’
‘Oh, un peu,’ Candida said, rolling her eyes. ‘Anyhow he speaks English perfectly well. We’ll take it into Boston and ship it through the port. It would be a terrible pity to pass up this exhibition. People from all over the world will see it. It’s an important show.’
Dinah wondered when Candida had become an expert on the art world. She had glanced at the letter on the refrigerator, then forgot it. She was too involved in her decision to be much use to Willie.
Candida stayed to supper, without anybody asking her as far as Dinah could tell. She seemed to do so by right. Willie was in the best of spirits. He kept telling Dinah little things about Candida, as if commending them to each other. ‘Candy likes to cook. She has a wonderful touch with pastry. Wait till you taste her pies,’ Willie said. For some reason his accent was pronounced. Candida seemed to bring out the southern gentleman in him. ‘Doesn’t she make a fine pie?’ he asked Jimmy to stand witness. Toby came by for Jimmy soon after supper and they went off together.
‘Candy likes to walk,’ he said. ‘You could take walks together.’
‘Oh yes,’ Candida said with too fervent enthusiasm. ‘I just love walking. I walk for miles, practically, whenever I get a chance.’
As the evening wore on, she caught Candida staring at her with intense curiosity and wariness. What did Candida hope for? What did the woman fear from her? Never previously had Candida shown the least curiosity about her. Suddenly Dinah was a person Candida had decided was important for good or ill.
Willie’s desire that she suddenly begin to like Candida worried at her. She began to suspect something more between them than his saving her from a punch in the nose. Could she ask Jimmy? Why not just wait and ask Willie. Why not go home and see what happened next? She stood and excused herself on the basis of fatigue and a long day’s work tomorrow. Neither objected. They both saw her to the door.
She went into her house but did not turn on the lights. Instead, feeling a trifle ridiculous, an amateur theatrical gumshoe, she watched the new house. The lights went out downstairs, but for the hall light left on for Jimmy. The lights went on upstairs, in the master bedroom. Candida did not leave. With Tosca and Figaro curled together like improperly sized yin and yang, nose to tail and tail to nose, in her lap as she rocked, she sipped cognac and watched for another two hours. Now it was after twelve. The house was dark except for the hall light, which Jimmy turned out as he went in. She could follow his progress to the bathroom and then to his bedroom. Finally his light too snapped off and the new house was completely dark.
Chapter Fifty-Two
WILLIE
Willie was trying to work, depressed and feeling it doubly because fall was his favourite season and he felt desperately alone. He had never grown bored with the colours of the Cape, never come to take them for granted. Every fall they burned for him, but this time, he did not catch fire with the Virginia creeper, the rum cherries. He avoided thinking how he was going to mail his enormous piece off to Paris, but it stood in the middle of the floor like a big awkward reproach whenever he entered his disused and dusty studio. He felt as if somebody else had created it and he was a fraud. While Dinah was in Scotland, he was marking time waiting for her; perhaps with her return his life would begin again. He was angry with her in a muted way for going, but she had been depressed too. They had pulled together getting through the funeral, the endless arrangements, but grief had separated as much as united them. It was a private emotion that each took off to brood over. He understood her running off to Scotland, at the same time he did not think it fair to desert him.
Therefore he was not irritated as he once would have been when Candida appeared just at twelve carrying a basket. ‘I had a roast beef, so I made sandwiches. I thought you might like lunch. I guess I’m so used to cooking for someone, I do it automatically, but the house felt empty.’ She was wearing a pale blue sweater and skirt the colour of her eyes. It set off her pale hair and her remaining tan. She always wore a fair amount of makeup, but he was used to that by now. It was just her way of trying to please, a kind of flirtation. Perhaps she had begun applying lots of makeup to cover the bruises from Alec.
‘No, I’m glad for the company. Should we go up to the house?’
‘Let’s picnic here. Your studio fascinates me. I’d never been in an artist’s studio before yours.’
‘Are you chilly? I can make a fire in the stove.’
‘That would be just lovely.’
He cleared a space on a card table and they pulled up straight chairs. She had brought sandwiches, a pasta salad and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. In a short time he was feeling almost happy, with company and good food and wine to warm him. He just never went and bought wine. That was something Susan had taken care of, so he had never learned what to pick out. He and Jimmy drank beer. They tended to eat in front of Dan Rather. Then they watched a ball game, with the pennant race tightening. It was a good season for sports on TV to kill the time till he could crawl into bed.
It felt wonderfully comforting and civilized to sit down with a woman and eat real food face-to-face, even on a card table in his studio and to drink a good red wine, even out of coffee cups, and sit and smile and flirt a little. She was telling him her week’s excitement with the lawyers and the settlement. She made funny stories of it, although he knew she found it upsetting and at times frightening. He was astonished to hear himself chuckling and then laughing. He could not remember the last time he had laughed out loud.
Then she got up, came around to him and put her arms around his neck. ‘Willie, you’ve been so good to me, I don’t know what I’d do without you,’ she said and kissed him on the mouth.
The wine must have gone to both their heads, he thought, but it also felt very sweet that she could come to him that way. He was surprised, and he thought he should not take advantage of her if she was drunk. Then he decided she wasn’t drunk and neither was he and so what? Her sweater was soft under his hands, more cloud than wool. Candida’s clothes seemed evanescent. But not the body underneath. She took a good f
irm grip on him. She was tall and he liked that. He liked the way she felt rubbing against him forthrightly, to let him know what she wanted. He appreciated being let to know that directly, not to be guessing and making mistakes.
He was surprised but then not. It felt right and natural. She had good firm swelling hips and buttocks his hands slid down to. It was awkward getting the clothes off the first time. Her underwear too was pale blue and she smelled like nice soap. She was not wearing perfume. He realized he had told her he did not like it, that Susan’s perfume used to give him a headache. He liked her having listened and taken note.
They made love on the cot in his studio. He had done that many times with Dinah, but never with Susan. Candida was hot and wet and eager. From the first moment he touched her between the legs and found the clitoris, she began breathing heavily and wriggling her ass. A kind of blush spread over her cupcake breasts. He got so excited he came sooner than he wanted, but he got hard again in a while and came back into her. Oh, it tasted good. He felt himself alive through and through for the first time in weeks. He felt whole. He did not want to take his hands off her. It was getting to be late afternoon. Shadows the colour of the backs of swallows barred the grass. He peed in the yard and came back to her, still spread on his couch like a Matisse odalisque. Her body was pear-shaped. He imagined doing a series of woman-fruit shapes in resin, to celebrate the way her body felt. Shapes that would seem to pulsate and yet be solidly, pulling him in toward them, pulling the eye and the hand into them. He saw a shape, woman and not, ripeness.
Afterward he made supper and she ate with Jimmy and him and spent the night. He felt a little awkward. There was no way to explain to Jimmy – what could he say? He slept better than he had in months. In the morning they made love again. She said she took the pill. She had not had any affairs ever, she said, not until she thought she was in love with Tyrone, but she wasn’t. She had simply wanted to be in love so much she had talked herself into it. She had known she wanted him for a whole month already.
Sex made her cheerful, he could tell, just as it did him. She was growing more confident around him. She got out of bed in the morning even more quickly than he did and ran downstairs in her blue robe to make breakfast. He could not get over how fast she got up and how she liked to make love in the mornings. It started the day out differently, on a high note.
When they got to the house in town that morning, Willie did not turn on his radio right away but said to Jimmy, ‘You know Candy stayed with me.’
Jimmy shrugged. ‘I figured that was in the works.’
‘How come?’ Willie cocked his head. ‘It surprised me.’
‘She’s fine, Dad. We both need a woman … What’s Dinah going to think about it? That’s more to the point.’
Willie grunted. That had to be dealt with when Dinah got back. He said nothing during their couple of phone calls. He hated trying to talk to her across the Atlantic. It made him feel grumpy.
Candy was trying to get the legal work straightened out in the city, so she had to keep running back and forth. In the settlement the lawyers were working out, Alec got the condominium and she got the house on the pond. They each kept their own vehicles, the securities they had brought with them, and split the mutual funds and the bank accounts. Willie had never been through a divorce, so the details intrigued him. Alec’s lawyer argued that his client should be compensated for the injury done him by Candida’s infidelity. Candida’s lawyer denied the infidelity, demanded compensation for the years she had spent supporting Alec emotionally and at times financially through medical school and internship, threatening to request a share of his lucrative practice. After much bobbing and weaving, a no fault divorce was worked out. In a way Willie was disappointed, for he had always loved courtroom dramas, but he could understand Candida’s reluctance. Jimmy followed the proceedings with interest, like the pennant race.
At first, it wasn’t clear to him how involved he and Candida were going to be. He assumed he would actually live with Dinah. They had been together all those years, but they had never lived in the same house. Then Dinah came back and said no right out. She wanted to live in her house and she did not want him to live there with her. He was disappointed, but Dinah obviously could see that. She immediately suggested to him that he find out if Candy wanted to live with him.
He was surprised she had guessed about them – or maybe Jimmy had dropped a hint? Maybe the change in himself was so apparent she could guess? – and pleased she accepted the relationship. He had expected to break it to her over the next week or so, but since she knew and didn’t seem outraged, he brought the two women together as soon as he could, so they might commence getting to be friends. He worried a little how it would work out, who he would spend the night with, and decided probably he would spend it alone for the sake of getting them off to a good start. Dinah’s running off with Zee to services had meant he had had some time to spend with Candida that week.
‘You don’t just expect them to, you know, get involved in the way Mother and Dinah were,’ Jimmy asked cautiously in the kitchen the night Willie had them both to supper.
‘Candy has never had a relationship with a woman – but then your mother hadn’t either, before Dinah. I don’t feel it’s my place to push that or to prevent it. I just want them to like each other.’
Jimmy rolled his eyes upwards. ‘Lots of luck.’
‘Dinah’s adaptable, and Candy really wants to get along with her.’
Indeed Dinah was very tactful and excused herself, leaving them together. He felt as if he was finally getting his life pulled back into shape. He didn’t come right out and ask Candy that evening if she wanted to live there, because he realized she had to keep her own residence while the divorce was in progress. But once they had become lovers, she never suggested that she go home at night. Now even when Candy didn’t sleep over, he saw her things hanging there, her slippery satin dark blue robe, her velour slippers that matched it, her fuchsia nightgown and her flimsy royal blue. The room no longer felt bereft. Susan had liked Candida and brought her into their lives; they had been friends. Susan would have approved of Candida being with him.
That was good because Dinah was making herself scarce. He wanted to confront her, but she had vanished. Even the cats were off someplace with her.
Sunday Willie called Lisa, as he did every week. She was expecting his call. ‘Willie, I’ve been thinking about what you said, about us coming to visit. If you send tickets, we could come for Thanksgiving or Christmas.’
‘I’ll do it. I’ll buy the tickets and send them to you. How’s my grandson Chris?’
When he got off the phone, Candy was open about the fact that she’d been listening. ‘You know, I was a travel agent. I worked in an agency in Boston while Alec was in med school. Let me make the arrangements.’
He was happy to turn the travel plans over to her. He liked the way she saw problems and set out to solve them without making a fuss. Alec was an idiot, letting go a cute warm generous woman like Candy. Alec was too immature and too self-involved to appreciate her, that’s what he told Candy. She had happened to him almost accidentally, like Susan running into him with her bicycle, but one of his strengths was that he could seize what was offered him, size it up quickly, instinctively, and take good strong hold. They were both earthy people who could make strong commitments without fuss.
‘I was into security, Willie. How much further can you go than marrying a medical student? Obviously with Tyrone, I was doing the same old thing, looking for a man to take care of me. But I don’t need taking care of. I’m not a child. I have my own money. I’ve finally grown up and now I can be with a man who isn’t safe and dull – a real artist. I wouldn’t have dared to be with you when I was younger, because I was too scared.’
‘But you’ve taken charge. A lot of women don’t have the guts to leave a man who beats them.’
‘You gave me the courage to leave. It was your support!’ She shook back her hair in that way
she had and beamed at him. She was letting her hair grow out for him – she knew he liked it softer.
The next day they took his piece into Boston to ship it to France. Alec had taken over the condominium, so they stayed in a new hotel down on the harbour. They had an Italian supper in the North End and then walked along the docks, window shopping. The whole trip was a present she was giving him. She had made the reservations on her credit card, separate now from Alec’s account, and she had chosen the hotel and the restaurant, places she wanted to share.
He felt special with Candy. He felt as if she was courting him, as if she saw him as this incredibly attractive and seductive man, as if his being simply the sculptor he was made him adorable to her. She kept asking him to teach her about art. She brought home books on Henry Moore and Hans Haacke, because he mentioned them casually. Maybe she was right, that he had saved her from Alec, from cruelty and abuse, from misery. Yes, they had saved each other. He had been paralysed with grieving.
‘Alec never had time for me. If we went to Cambridge and ate in a fern bar, it was a big event. Our social life was having bad dinners with proctologists and orthopaedic surgeons and ob-gyn men. And their whacked out beaten down wives. My future.’
He began to see them both as people who were more loving, more giving, more sexual and sensual than the partners they had been with appreciated or could use. With each other, they bloomed into what they were meant to be.
‘You know what? My divorce will be settled long before the show. Let’s go to France when it opens.’
‘To Paris? In February?’
‘Why not? I’ve never been able to travel. I did during college, in fact I spent my junior year in Grenoble. But Alec was the world’s worst traveller. He hated anyplace where he couldn’t get a steak rare and Diet Pepsi, and he thought all those foreigners were jabbering that way just to annoy him.’