by Marge Piercy
“Poor letter. I see you’ll have to be recopied.”
“Should I write in the margin things that need changing?”
“Like my English teacher? Don’t look gloomy, Leslie, it’s a privilege that I trust you to the point of showing you such personal correspondence.”
“Oh, Bernie’s love letters. Wow, what a treat.”
“Is it a love letter?” Honor sat up, smoothing out her denim skirt. She had not changed from school. “Do you really think so? Rather than a letter of brotherly affection? He’s told me I remind him of his lost sister.”
“Oh, has he? Ann-Marie, you mean?”
“He says she resembled me physically. She was beautiful and rebellious and couldn’t tolerate hypocrisy.… But is it a love letter?”
“Is that what you want me to tell you? The hell with that. With one hand you wave goodbye. With the other you want a romance.”
“But if he really loves me.… Oh, never mind. Read my letter.”
Leslie picked up the moss green pages again.
I am writing to you a day after receiving your note because I feel obliged to give some sort of answer. I hope this will terminate all correspondence between us (that includes phone calls and standing staring at the house under streetlights too!).
I regret more than I can say those foolish phone calls and the afternoon I said I loved you. Mama martyred you before me. In resentment I persuaded myself I loved you. So you see, I have no feeling you at all. I dislike even to hear your name mentioned. Please do not try to see me or communicate (this includes following me to school!).
I cannot forgive the unkind things you said about Mama. She is not “crazy” or “repressed” and if she is “possessive” what do you call yourself? As for what you said about Leslie, she has never done anything such as you insinuated to or with me. I shall have the generosity to believe some of what you said is true.
What I said once in anger, I repeat in calm—you are cold and calculating. You made me think you needed me and used my blind faith against me. I never want to hear of you again!
Sincerely,
Honor Rogers
“You stopped calling yourself Honorée?”
“My French period is fini. I’ll recopy the first page right now. Then we can walk to the mailbox.”
Leslie picked up Bernie’s letter again. Others around you have accused me: Mama and her, yoked in unlikely harmony as his enemies. What had Honor said about him thinking of her as his dead sister? The line she too had fallen for. Was there a different model Ann-Marie for each target? Did he have a whole wardrobe of dead sisters? Did he have dead brothers for his male lovers? She felt cheated and robbed. Had.
The sound of tearing paper caught her attention. Scraps were floating in the breeze from the opened windows to litter the old rug. Honor had buried her hands in her hair and was moaning, “Oh, I can’t do it! How can I hurt him this way?”
“What did you do that for?” Leslie cried out in irritation. “Do you mean what you say or not?”
“What should I do? He says he loves me. If he really loves me, I should forgive him. I should go to him.”
Leslie looked at her coldly. The sun shimmered on Honor’s loose hair. Her body inscribed a poignant arc of sorrow. Leslie had a barely controllable desire to kick her. Instead she got to her feet and wandered past the couch, her hands thrust in the pockets of her jeans. On or off, on or off, let’s get done with this charade. Off with him finally. Enough! She sat down beside Honor, not too close, and tapped her shoulder. Honor’s amber eyes welled a couple of tears. “So, kid,” Leslie said, with grating heartiness, “what do you want? His head on a platter? You want him for a secret boyfriend while your mother chews nails? You want to end up going to City? Fine with me. I’ll see you, at least till I clear out of here.”
“But he’s sorry for how he acted. And he loves me!”
“So do I. So what?” Leslie said, who did not feel loving at all. “His letter is designed to get you back. Okay, while we’re working, let’s write three or four letters. It’ll speed up events if we have the letters of reconciliation and rejection on hand as events demand them, instead of having to sit down each time and grind out a new one. I’ll write the go-away letters and you write the ones that say come back.”
“Leslie! You make it gross.” But Honor was faintly smiling. “It is awfully dramatic, isn’t it?”
“And you’re enjoying it. You gave him the only home he ever had! For five minutes he knew the joy of groping his dead sister.”
“Leslie, how can you say that—that I’m enjoying it? It is laid on a bit thick.” Honor stooped and began to gather the scraps. “I guess we could stick these together and copy it. Tell me. Should I really?”
Mama came home from work before they had taped the letter back together. I swear Honor never intended to send it, Leslie thought glumly as she left. She’d be happy to keep both of us dangling for a year. As she says all the time, what else is nearly as interesting?
She had tried to talk to Honor about the women’s school, but Honor yawned at the idea. “Ugh. I’m sure it’s like the girl scouts all over again. I hated every moment of it.” But the women’s school troubled Leslie, it made her fidget and squirm in her life. She had stopped altogether going to karate; she had quit cold turkey, and Honor’s melodrama had filled up all the chinks in her life. But it didn’t quite work.
This time Leslie invited Tasha out to breakfast, and she was amused to noticed that Rae came too. The day was perfect and blue. Rae wore leather shorts, well studded; she was a woman who dressed herself fashionably. She had got Tasha into a French sailor shirt. In front of such dyke splendor, Leslie felt seedy. She did not know if it would be worse if Tasha knew all about George and the capital development project, or all about her tug-of-war with Bernie over Honor. Over the waffles she hemmed and hawed. Finally she said, “I have been thinking about the women’s school.”
“You’ll teach a history class!” Tasha got excited at once, knocking over the syrup that Rae automatically caught.
“No. Not really. I think not.… What I was thinking about is—”
“The women’s school. Sure.” Rae grinned cynically at her.
“I could teach karate. Self-defense, if you prefer. I have my black belt now.”
“Honestly? That’s marvelous.… What’s a black belt?” Tasha asked.
“It’s a rank,” Rae said. “A high one. Black’s beautiful in karate.”
“Anyhow, I think women would be interested. I’ll bring it up at the collective tomorrow. Want to come to the meeting?” When Leslie made apologies, Tasha went on: “I’m sure they’ll be excited.… But why don’t you do a history course anyhow?”
Thursday afternoon Honor appeared at Leslie’s apartment disheveled and close to tears. “Look! He broke my watch!”
She took it. “It’s still running. Only the catch is broken.”
“But Mama just gave it to me. She’ll say I’m not mature enough for a watch of my own. That I’m too careless to have nice things! How can I tell her that he broke it? I’m not supposed to be seeing him. Now I’m in real trouble.” Honor flung herself on the mattress.
“I hope you didn’t tell your mother you were with me. I’m tired of being a cover for that weasel.” She stood arms akimbo.
“Bernie showed up at the bus stop. He cut classes today and he talked me into cutting. I haven’t done it since Barbara and I went to see a Robert Redford movie. Of course I was ever so much younger then, that’s when I used to like him. Anyhow, Bernie said he could forge a note in Mama’s writing saying I was ill.”
“So off you went.”
“I hardly ever get to see him, I’d been seeing him briefly after school, but one of the neighbors told Mama. I swear it’s too tacky—the neighbors spying on me!”
“Can’t you stand up to her? I think Bernie is effort down a rathole, but do you want her to dictate who your friends are?” Bernie got rid of today, me tomorrow.
&
nbsp; “But she’s still trying to decide whether they’re going to let me go away. I’m accepted into the U of M at Ann Arbor, Ohio at Athens, and here. She won’t let me go farther. I want to go East, but she won’t hear of it. I got accepted into Barnard, but no scholarship so I can’t go.” Honor sat up, sticking the pillow behind her, and sulked. “I want to go away, so right now is a rotten time to persuade her she can’t trust me. Of course she can’t.” Honor smiled. “Have you any delicious wine?”
“I’m not going to send you home smelling of alcohol, as well as with a broken watch.… I don’t think I can fix this, but I might be able to stick it together. How about herb tea?”
“Mint? Please do fix the catch. I’ll be so grateful!”
Leslie put the watch on a plate and squatted over it tinkering. “What happened today that he broke your watch?”
“Nothing!” Honor turned away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Something he did?”
“The whole thing. Why go over it? It’s too painful.”
“What happened?”
Honor gave her a long look of reproach. “You won’t even tell me what happened last month.”
She looked up from the watch to stare at Honor. “Did you sleep with him?”
“Leslie! But I did let him … kiss me, embrace me. Oh, why? I’m feeling almost a.… physical revulsion.” Suddenly Honor began to sob into her hands.
“A physical revulsion?” Leslie was interested. “Was he rough?”
“Only when he tore the watch from my arm. He said it was a bribe from Mama to stop seeing him. Isn’t that unfair? I’ve been begging for a watch for a year, it has nothing to do with him. As if I could be bought off!” Honor dabbed at her eyes.
“He wants you to be lovers now?”
“So he said.” Honor lay back, pouting again. “I don’t believe him. I don’t believe he wants me. In a way it’s insulting. I think I have a beautiful body. I imagine giving it to a man as one of the … well nicest presents.”
“How can you talk as if you were a box of chocolates?”
Honor giggled. “I think I’d be more fun than a box of chocolates.… But, Leslie, of course I’d be giving myself. I don’t know the first thing to do. They don’t excite me, those books that explain sex as if they were teaching you how to repair your own car. Cam tries to get me to read them. Someone will initiate me and then I’ll feel differently.”
“You can initiate yourself. You can masturbate, you can experience orgasm. You don’t have to go blindly and stupidly into sex.”
“It was pretty blind and stupid this afternoon! Oh, I’m furious. It was ugly! It’s not fair.… And he said vicious things about Mama. I’ll never forgive him, never! That my own mother acts like a lover to me. Did you ever hear of anything so perverse? Mama never even kisses me. Nobody in our family ever hugs except Cam. I hate him!”
“Then give it up. Quit it.”
“Will I have to?” Honor sighed. “Yes, it’s too messy.… I want things to be mysterious and romantic. That’s a choice too, and I’m making it. I understand, don’t you see? Romance fascinates me. School is boring. I don’t know what I want to be. I expect sometime in college I’ll take a course and figure it out. That I want to be an anthropologist or a neurosurgeon or a professor of something.” Honor made her eyes enormous, pulling her hair forward across her high cheekbones. “I’ll relinquish him! It’s over.”
It was a faint feeling she tried to suppress, faint but not suppressible. Honor lay on the mattress with her hair spread artfully and looked at her through her lashes, a glint of amber eyes. Am I to seduce her? But she keeps saying, A man, he. She leaves me no space in which to imagine myself with her. Yet she lies there seductively. She can’t be unaware; she never is. She was ready to go to bed with Bernie this afternoon, and then she didn’t; and it’s still on her mind.
Slowly, hesitantly, Leslie came to sit on the edge of the mattress. Very lightly she took Honor’s hand. Honor let her hand be squeezed and returned the pressure. Leslie knew she had to keep talking, but her mind was stuck. Say something. “I think Bernie’s desperate. Yes. He wants to make love to you to hold on to you. You deserve better than that.”
“But he doesn’t really want to! That’s what’s so nasty. It’s all a big put-on. I’m in a lot of trouble at home, and it’s not even real!”
She could not put her arms around Honor. She was afraid to. She had little experience in making passes. Always she had been approached or it had been clearly mutual, as with Valerie, as in the bars. Women understood each other with little soft inviting gestures or open flirtations. It seemed frightening to reach out suddenly and with clear sexual intent take hold of a woman who might not like that. It seemed almost hostile. She needed a sign from Honor, unmistakable. She talked randomly. “Have to get ready for George’s soon. It’s another Thursday and I help Sue set up.”
“Oh, maybe I’ll go. But I can’t tonight.… But it was interesting.”
They babbled on, neither listening to the other. Finally Honor looked at the clock. “Oh, it’s four-thirty! I’ll be in trouble even deeper. I have to leave at once. Did you fix my watch?”
“I stuck it together with a bent pin, but it has to be fixed by a jeweler.”
“Oh dear. Thanks for the help. Maybe I can sneak it past her. But how will I ever take it to a jeweler’s? It’s so complicated!” In a swirl of skirts Honor was gone.
Why didn’t I do something? She wanted me to, Leslie thought. Or did she want to reject me the way she felt rejected by Bernie? Leslie leaned her head against the door. I’ll never know, will I? The truth is, I didn’t want to. I feel cold and calculating, the way I describe Bernie. I feel distant and manipulative. How can I reach out to her? I don’t even know if I like her any more. All I know is I want him out of our lives. I don’t want to win her; I only want to defeat him.
eighteen
“He’s writing me letters, leaving notes. I never know when he’ll show up, the last of the Mohicans with his hand on his heart at the bus stop. It’s absurd, Leslie. I’m beginning to loathe him! No, we must see him. We must have this out and bring it to an end. He says if I’ll see him, he’ll call off his campaign.” Honor nudged toward her the plate of carrot sticks, radishes and celery. Honor had suddenly gone on a diet, and there was no more fudge in the Rogers kitchen.
Leslie took a radish. “Okay, you have to see him. How does that translate into we have to see him?”
“You don’t want me to see him alone, do you? Besides, you’re in this all the way.” Honor grimaced as she bit into a carrot. “You’ve been influencing me, you can’t deny it. It’s time to stand up to him in person. I need your counsel. I may even need your protection!” Honor tossed her hair, looking not at all worried.
“You just think it’ll be more dramatic with all three of us there.”
Honor put her hands together as if praying. “Don’t you long to confront him? You’ve said such dreadful things about him.”
“Dreadful? Have I?”
“That he’s a compulsive liar. Manipulative. Cold and calculating. A desperate psychotic personality.”
“Oh, but that’s true. I mean,” Leslie said hesitantly, “he is like that Isn’t he?”
“And you don’t think those are awful things to say? You’re silly, Leslie, honestly.” Honor pushed the plate resolutely away. “Enough of that cellulose! We’ll meet at your house. That strikes me as safe. The scene can’t go on forever, because everybody will be too uncomfortable.”
Honor was so decisive, Leslie couldn’t believe it. She kept waiting for the inevitable tears, the comments about how they had once again misjudged poor Bernard. “But why wait till Saturday? I could take off work a little early Tuesday and we can get it over with.”
“I’m very busy this week, Leslie. It’s close to graduation. We’ll do it Saturday.”
“You’re not just putting it off? You’ll change your mind about him before then.”
; “Really, Leslie, you talk as if I’m changeable. I see what has to be done now. It’s over, and we just have to get him to realize that and clear off.” Honor went into the living room to phone. “Hello, may I speak with Bernard Guizot, please.”
Leslie could not stand listening. She did not know why, but she could not listen. Honor sounded mocking and superior. Leslie hurried into the bathroom, shut the door and ran the water to drown out Honor’s voice. Honor’s and Mama’s panties hung drying over the curtain rod, large and larger nylon pastels. Maybe she was a fool to hide in the bathroom; Bernie would talk Honor around. Honor had been in a cold fury with him ever since the scene with her watch. Maybe graduation was making her so preoccupied and brisk. She could not even remember her own high school graduation in the fog of misery that had hung over her senior year, but she supposed it was a more invigorating occasion for Honor.
When she ventured back into the livingroom, Honor was lying in the middle of the room tentatively struggling through a few sit-ups. “Under control, Leslie. At least the arrangements, and that’s half the battle, isn’t it? This is a lot of work.” She stopped to catch her breath and sat up with her arms tucked around her legs. “We meet at your apartment at two Saturday afternoon. I have to return some books to the main library from a paper I was writing. I’ll go there first in a great hurry and then come.”
“Come early. I want you there when he arrives. You get to my place by one-forty-five. No, one-thirty.”
“Don’t be silly, Leslie. He won’t bite you. Just because he pulled the watch off my arm is no reason for you to be afraid of him.” Honor gave up on the exercising and stood rubbing her back.
“I’m not afraid! But we ought to get it over with. I have tons of work to do. Finals are next week.”
“Good! You can work right up until two. I’ll be on time, don’t worry. I’m depressingly punctual now that I have my watch. I like to look at it on my arm, and every time I look, of necessity I see the time. Not an unmixed blessing.” Honor brushed at her skirt. “It feels like summer already.”