by Marge Piercy
“It could be a nice summer,” Leslie offered in mild hope. “We could go swimming.… If you ever do that?”
“Why not?” Honor said bravely. “I have to get out of the house more. Mama is driving me crazy! I am not used to being … patrolled!”
Afernoons in the country.… Bernie and the row-boat … forget. It could be nice, simple, a real friendship with healthy outdoorsy things to do. She must be having a good effect on Honor. Honor was becoming visibly less fey, less withdrawn and sheltered. Less weird, really. “Are you fighting a lot with her?”
“More just bumping on each other. She wants me to stay home tonight and watch a Bette Davis film on UHF.… We’ve seen it before, it’s about a governess in nineteenth-century France who loves this nobleman, but purely. I’m tired of all that.… I think I’ll call up Cam and get her to take me to rehearsal. They’re opening Rhinoceros in a week.”
“Paul? I mean, you’d like to see him?”
“Paul? Don’t be absurd, Leslie. He’s crude. He’s just a Motor City Joseph Papp who didn’t make it in the big time. Besides, I bet he’s like Bernie underneath. I just want to get out.”
If I wasn’t so frantically busy with finals, Leslie thought, there are lots of things we could begin to do together.
Whenever she thought of Saturday, she felt distressed and agitated, almost excited. Finals were comimg and she had a lot of preparation. She spent as little time on the project as she could get away with. Fortunately, George was cutting corners too. He said he wanted to get home early and play outside with the kids, for he had just bought bicycles for everyone, including a reluctant Sue. One of his current subjects was how the bicycle was the most efficient machine for transportation ever invented. It was elegant in terms of energy use. Secretly she hoped he would pull a muscle and shut up. She still dreamed of a motorcycle.
When he left early again on Tuesday, she had to call the house to ask about some computer runoff. He was not at home. She immediately tried to cover. Normally, she would not have let Sue know he had left the office. What Sue knew and what Sue really knew were two different matters. But Leslie had not even noticed him faintly interested in anyone; now she had given Sue an early warning.
Friday he kept glancing at his watch. About one-forty he was off, saying he had errands to run. He combed his hair carefully, he smoothed his mustache and sucked in his little pot. Then he whistled as he ran down the steps instead of taking the old cranky elevator. Yes, George definitely had something going.
At four he came whistling back. He did not look rumpled as he tried to cram three hours’ work into one. His mood was expansive. He even let Cam take off early to go to the special rehearsal for the Ionesco play they were opening, whereas earlier in the week he had said quite coldy he needed her until five. Cam and Mark were still sharing the studio apartment his parents paid for. Cam was no longer friendly to her. When Leslie entered the women’s room, Cam fled.
When she stopped by Friday at Tasha’s house to find out what the school collective had decided, she was directed to the women’s school, where Tasha and Rae were sanding floors. They were both close to the same color with sawdust stuck to their faces, arms and hair with sweat. They seemed in a good mood, though Rae complained her back was breaking.
Tasha sat on the front steps, fanning herself with a newspaper. “We definitely want your course. In fact people are already signing up.”
“Really? Do you think there’ll be enough?”
“Too many,” Tasha said firmly. “It’s hard to find a woman qualified to teach martial arts. Mostly, you know, you get a woman who’s just a step ahead of the class, and people can get hurt that way.”
“I have a lot of ideas how to teach women. I don’t know if they’ll work … but I’m willing to try if the others are.”
Rae sat down, squeezing between them, but she gave Leslie a broad smile. She was acting friendlier, as if she was classifying Leslie as interested in the women’s school rather than in Tasha. “How come you changed your mind? About teaching here I mean.”
Leslie scratched her head. “I’m lonely, I guess.”
“Well, you teach karate, you know half the class are sure to fall in love with you.” Rae gave her a curious head-tilted-to-one-side look. “You like that?”
“Leslie, that can’t be your real reason,” Tasha said. “It’s important for women to defend ourselves!”
“It has to do with feeling weird after I finally made black belt.” Leslie paused, groping for words. “Like it maybe really is crazy to do all that effort for nobody except me.” She could feel both of them listening carefully, intently. She felt a sense of at-homeness with them, an ease of discourse, of communication, that she did not really want to feel. “That if I don’t share it, something’s wrong.… Most women never get a chance to follow through on anything the way I’ve pushed myself with karate.” Bernie would understand her reluctance to enjoy the coziness of the ghetto: that only here could she talk openly and be listened to with full attention and sympathy.
“Mmmmm.” Rae rubbed her nose. “It’s owing back to where you come from, maybe. I can dig on that. When you achieve you either hate the people where you come from—like you made it and they didn’t and they’re shit. Or you want to go back and take along what you learned, to share it out. People come out both ways, I guess.”
“But professional training is the same, right?” Tasha said. “All that grad school. Don’t you want to share that too?” She never gave up. “Lots of women would sign up for a history course.”
Was it because Tasha needled her politically, questioned her about her work, shook her confidence in her own righteousness that she had not been attracted to Tasha for so long? Or was it just because Tasha was not as pretty as Honor? Leslie was not comfortable with the question, no matter how she answered it to herself. In no way could she doubt that Tasha was a better person, and far more affectionate. Rae looked at her still with eyes of delight, and seemed always restraining herself from a hug.
Saturday morning she did her washing at the laundromat and her shopping for the week at the Starlite Supermarket. Passing a bakery, she was struck by an impulse like a bright ball rolling across her path, and she popped inside. “How much is that chocolate cake?” She bought it, a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for them. She had to be crazy. But they both had such sweet tooths. Hardly anyone ever came to her house; not since she had lived with Valerie had she “entertained,” but she kept the notion from her mother’s fussing when relatives visited that company got at least a cake. Maybe Honor would hang around.
Another thing she did was steal irises from a bed outside a boarded-up house. She clipped them with her pocketknife, carrying off an armload of purple, of white, of brown and gold irises that filled her head with their non-sweet fragrance. She imagined a lover Iris who smelled like that. The chamber of the iris was a vagina. Women were taught to be ashamed of their organs, but flowers held theirs in the air brightly colored and flagrant. The scent made her giddy as she climbed to her room.
At one-thirty she jerked smooth the bright blanket on her bed. She rearranged the irises in their bottle. The day before she had swiped ground coffee and a filter from the office; now she improvised a drip pot from the teapot and made coffee for them. At a quarter to two she suddenly pulled off her jeans and put on the crushed cotton pants and the striped top Sue had given her. At five to two she went downstairs and propped the outer door open with a brick.
At ten after the hour someone knocked. Please, Honor, she thought. Perhaps Bernie would not come at all. What had he to gain? Why did he seek the meeting? It had to be Honor. It wasn’t. She blinked, her gaze sliding from his face. “Come in,” she said in a high squeaky voice and immediately began taking surreptitious deep breaths. She backed out of his way and after a quick imploring glance down the stairs, hoping to see Honor, shut the door. They stood about in her room looking at stove and refrigerator respectively.
“I thought she’d be
here,” Bernie said plaintively. “Do you suppose she’s not coming?”
She had to look at him. He was wearing a black tee shirt and jeans. His skin was golden tan and his eyes darted like minnows, silver and fast away from her. He was as nervous as she was and that heartened her. “She said she had to go to the library first to return some books.”
“Why couldn’t she go afterward?”
She realized she had never thought to ask Honor that. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon. Unless her mother?”
“She just wants to make a late entrance.” He leaned on the refrigerator. “Is that coffee?”
She nodded, unable to understand why it hurt to look at him. But it did. It hurt her. They both went on standing six feet apart not knowing what to do with themselves until she had the idea of pouring coffee for him. Then she brought him the cup. The handing over of the cup was as formal as if some document of state were being exchanged, some prisoner sent over a hostile border. She did not come as close to him as she normally would have, and he reached out his hand farther. They both carefully calculated so that no part of their fingers touched. The calculation and the nervousness were so visible that a quick spasm of amusement tightened his face around his mouth.
Leslie offered, “Perhaps her mother kept her from coming.”
“That woman’s a vampire,” he snarled. “Do you realize that if Honor is not pried out of that house by force, by guile, by some damn means, she could end up like that?”
“If we don’t scare Mama, Honor will go away to school in the fall. There’s no chance of her hanging around there. Don’t you see that? Even Cam flew. Do you want some cake? I bought a chocolate cake.”
“You did what?” He stared at her. It was the first time he had really looked at her and then he got stuck as she had. Nervousness sputtered between them. “No, thanks.… When do your finals start?”
“Monday. And you?”
“The same. I’m not done till Thursday.”
Neither of them could think of another word to say and they were both looking everywhere rather than at each other. Finally Bernie seized a piece of cake. Leslie went over to the window and looked out on her fire escape, the expanse of tarred roof. “Maybe Honor dreads this too. So she puts it off by being late.”
“Not bad.” He meant the cake. He was licking his fingers. “Did you dread it, Les? Did you?”
“Are you kidding? Why would I want to go through this?”
“Distasteful, isn’t it? It’s amazing what you put up with, out of a sense of duty.”
“What does that mean? Honor’s my friend.”
“Once you were my friend. Remember?”
“Once you were mine, Bernie. But you couldn’t wait to become my enemy. With Honor.”
“But you outgeneraled me. You make a bad enemy. You hang in there and fight, fight, fight.… Did you ever stop just once to think what that whole business between us, even giving it your own distorted interpretation, might have done to me?”
“No. I was too busy finding out what it did to me.” Now why did she say that? She wanted to retract. She felt she had made herself vulnerable, but he was too angry, too excited to notice.
“Well, I’m not asking you to think now. If you’d cared for me at all, at all, you’d have had patience with me. You’d have tried to understand.”
“Cared! You cared so much you couldn’t hardly wait to run home and start writing love letters to Honor.”
Bernie looked startled. He poured himself another cup of coffee. “Come now, they weren’t exactly love letters. Did she think they were?”
“You rather gave that impression,” Leslie said dryly. She felt better. As long as they talked about Honor she felt on hard ground.
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d read them. You didn’t, of course?” He paused. Leslie said nothing, embarrassed. He took silence for assent. “They were just pleas she not forget our friendship. Knuckle under to Mama. Follow you over the side.”
“That’s not the impression you gave Honor. And you know it. You’ve been hounding her like a despairing lover.”
“I’ve been frantic. I couldn’t let go. You can’t imagine how important she is to me. But the harder I’ve tried to hold on, the worse I’ve done. I’ve tried to tie her down.… But I won’t lose her. You and her damn mother have given me a hard time, but you’ll end by helping me. Because you martyr me in her eyes. You’ll see today. It’s one thing for her to act cold to me over the phone. When we’re face to face she won’t hold out. I’ll win, Leslie.”
“What will you win? What will you win this time?” She poured herself a cup of coffee with the sense of its being a strong drink. She hardly ever had coffee; she considered it a poison. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she crumbles this afternoon. If you walk out of here arm in arm, what then? You want to hold on. You want her so close she can’t form a judgment against you. That drives you into trying to make love to her. You’re asking more than she can give. And assuming you can give what you can’t.”
“What did she tell you?” He frowned, rubbing his knuckles.
“What did she tell me about what? She told me what’s happening.”
“I wonder.” He grinned. He paced from the refrigerator to the window. “Oh, I have no doubts at all you believe you acted for the best throughout.”
“Not throughout.”
“Except for minor slips. But I’m sure through these last weeks you’ve been reasonable. Calm and dispassionate, like a doctor cutting a small malignant tumor in plenty of time to save the patient. Even I, the tumor, admire you.”
Leslie put her cup on top of the refrigerator. The coffee seemed to hurt her throat. “You don’t see that what you want you can’t have in this situation. It isn’t me in your way.”
“You asked nothing for yourself except that there should not be too many melodramatics. I think you’ve even lost your feeling for Honor.” He stopped dead in front of her. “Do you love her still? You don’t, do you?”
“I had to control it. Or like you I’d have tried to get what I couldn’t.”
“So you won nothing. Your conscience is clear.”
“Who won anything? What is winning, you damn fool!”
He took hold of her arm and then looked startled that he had done so. They both jumped and then stood there bristling. “Why didn’t you tell her? I kept waiting for you to tell her. You feel hurt, but you go out into the world to protect your sisterhood. Didn’t you realize, you idiot, that you could have told her nothing, nothing at all that would have finished her with me more quickly?”
She nodded. Her throat was closed. She nodded again as if afraid he might try to shake words from her.
“It would have hurt her pride to know we’d slept together. You can’t imagine how. And lied to her. Kept it from her. Why did you?”
“I wasn’t protecting her.”
“Were you ashamed? Was that it?”
“I was ashamed.”
“Of me? Why? Was it that bad? Was it really so bad we both had to run off?”
It was all still there untouched. The pain, the outrage, the anger, the connection, it was all still there molten and raw and tangled. It was between them like an aborted baby. Maybe they hated each other. She did not know what to call the pain. “Why did you run out of the house? It was you who ran!” She heard herself speak as if it were someone else’s high angry voice.
“I hurt! You pushed me away. How could you? And why didn’t you tell her? I have to know. I kept waiting for you to tell her. It would have done so much damage. Why didn’t you do that to me? Why didn’t you, damn you? Why?”
She was braced so hard that his shaking simply did not move her. His face looked hot as the sun. “It belonged to me.”
“How you turn the knife!”
A knock at the door. It took them a moment to hear it. They both moved forward, paused, looked at each other—startled by how they were standing, bodies almost touching. Like conspirators, she thought. God, i
t’s so strange. They were both getting control of themselves, as if they were twins, as if they were of some secret family, looking at each other almost with pity, almost embracing. The disengagement from the wrestling of anger was painful too. They were so passionately caught. Then Leslie went and opened the door.
“I could hear you shouting but I couldn’t make out what you were saying. I hope I didn’t miss anything exciting. Sorry I’m late, but I had to pick up a few books. I decided I should read up on history, Leslie, so I can understand what you’re doing.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, but you should have let me make up a reading list—”
“I’ve asked Leslie to be present because you’ve made me feel I can’t trust you,” Honor said, putting down her book bag. She was wearing her drawstring pants and a low-cut ruffly summer blouse. “And because I think she’s really a party to what’s been happening. Don’t you think so, Leslie?”
She produced a throaty noise and looked at the stove.
“No doubt,” Bernie said. “How much a party you might be surprised yourself.”
“First of all, I told Leslie pretty much everything. I showed her your letters and mine.”
“No!” His face jumped. “They must have amused you. Did you roll on the floor giggling?”
“Don’t look up, Bernie. The light in the ceiling’s too high for you to reach in here.” Honor turned to Leslie to add, “Breaking light bulbs with his bare hands is one of his ways of showing mental anguish. Why not just bang your head on the floor? It gives as much proof of sincerity as breaking a bulb, and it’s less of a nuisance with the glass underfoot.”
“It’s lucky your mother kept you locked up at home these past two weeks, because I might have wrung your neck.”
Honor touched her throat with a shudder. For a moment she looked frightened. Bernie shook his head roughly, clawing his hair back. “I’m sorry. You know I don’t mean that.”