by Marge Piercy
Leon paused, his face gone blank. Then he cracked Paul on the biceps. “Follow your own scene. My mind’s blown tonight. I just want out of here.”
She barely got her door shut before he started—not in the direction of the city but north to the tollroad.
“Bastards, bastards,” he sang in his throat. “Turn your skull inside out and all they got to say is, dirty-dirty! What do they think’s inside their own? Shit, that thing’s beautiful. Blind hedgehogs. Touch them on their bellies and they curl up.”
The moon was halved but ice-bright in the cold blue night sky. After they got out of the traffic of the northern suburbs the road was empty except for an occasional truck. Even with the top up and heater on the car was cold. Nestling into her bucket seat she almost wished for Fern’s old fur. He pushed his foot on the gas and the line crept toward her, 70, 80, 85, 90, she watched it come 95, 100. He sat as if in a trance with the lips drawn back leaving the teeth a little exposed, but his eyes flicked from the speedometer to the road and back again. High whine of the engine. The night was a narrowing funnel. She felt numb. They would be smashed to bits against a bridge and she did not care. She was too exhausted. The line inched toward her, 105, 110, 115. For an instant it rose higher, 117, 118, and then sank back to 115. Slowly Leon eased his foot on the gas and gradually the car slowed. At seventy they seemed scarcely to move past the blurred embankments. He laughed. “We won’t mention that to Sid.”
“All we needed was to get the state cops on our necks.”
“You were right, I should have brought Our Lady. That would show them who’s obscene. God, that they dare use that word. That guy Mel who runs the society, he evaluates weapons systems all day—efficiency in megadeaths. Obscene?”
“You’ve never wanted to use me in a film.”
“Nah.” A couple of moments later he blew out snorts of laughter.
“That’s so funny?” She made her voice grate.
“I was picturing you in that washing scene. You wouldn’t look guilty or fearhaunted or pathetic. No, you’d look like a balabosta giving herself a good scrub in a poorly lit bathroom.”
She would look worse than that: she was too fleshy to photograph well. Embarrassing vision.
“Could’ve picked up something myself better than what Paul got. Couple of those girls—nice ginch.”
“So sorry. Wasn’t my idea to go along, remember?”
“You could’ve picked somebody up. Think I’d stop you?”
No, just make life miserable the next day. “Idiot, I’m not looking for ginch. If I want anything, it’s a relationship.”
“Aha.” He turned off at the exit for Wedge’s Corners and headed into the Fox Lake region near the Wisconsin border. “Looking for one with me?”
“I don’t have to look every moment.” She could feel herself being manipulated, but could not tell if he was pushing toward or only playing one of his late night games of hide-and-seek.
“I don’t think you know what you want from me.”
He turned off the highway onto sideroads. After the tollroad the pavement seemed to twist and barely dodge among the trees. Though he drove more slowly the speed felt greater because of the trunks flying past, the crests and dips. She felt the road in her feet and buttocks. The night was crisp, clear: the air stood frozen up to the frozen stars, up to the frosted smear of galaxies. Lake was hard to tell from meadow except for the cottages outlining the shores. On one bigger lake the ice had been partly cleared and shanties for ice fishermen huddled out on the bare expanse. She felt occupied, crowded with lostness, speed, images, dark, cold, him. “I suppose I want … what happens.”
“What will happen?”
“Do you know?”
He drove actively, shifting for curves, pushing the car at the road. “Can you imagine what it’s like being married to me? The night the shit hit the fan. Because I’m not different. I’m like I am now—the same. You see? Do you see?”
“I don’t think I’m marriageable myself.”
“Because of that dimwit.”
“Asher was kind, gentle. Only I felt I’d been put in a box. I tried hard to be a wife and turned into a sleepwalker.”
“Go on, you need to be married.” He accelerated, sending the Porsche pouncing over the brink of a short steep hill. “You’re just saying, me too.”
“Sometimes I think you’re a great coward, Leon.”
“Sometimes I think you’re a great tease.”
“Not as big a one as you.”
He grinned.
“Besides, you wouldn’t be the same with somebody else as with Joye. People differ, so they prompt different faces out of you.”
“I’m the same, can’t you see that?”
“You’re not the same with Paul as you are with me.”
“Who’re you kidding?” His voice rose savagely. “I don’t act with either of you. I make myself available. You want to do something? I’m ready. You want to sit around? fine. You want to deal with your problems? good. I’m a catalyst. I make things crystallize in you. I talk about what you want to talk about, I’m a thing you bounce off of and learn …”
A fine tension of exasperation lit her nerves. “I almost think you believe that.”
“Even with Joye I was only a catalyst. I gave her something to react to. But she couldn’t learn from her reactions. She couldn’t become a free agent, and she’s still reacting. But I stay the same, I sit in my room, I wait. Nothing acts on me.”
Under halfclosed lids she looked at him, annoyed. She drew off her glove and put her warm hand on the back of his neck. Slowly she drew her hand along his neck, dipped into the collar of his jacket, deliberately she kneaded her fingers into him. Then she took her hand back. She smiled.
Coming out onto a highway he turned back in the direction of the tollroad. “When are they tearing your building down?”
“Don’t know. I got my eviction notice.” Finally she told him.
“Yeah? Why don’t you move in.”
“Leon, I told you about my marriage. I can’t crawl into somebody else’s bag.” She hugged herself. “We’d turn into people quarreling about who left the water running. You eat each other till you’re both digested to nothingness. You find out how even two people with no particular talent for torture can fix each other. It’s more than that: it’s what people won’t allow of each other, and there you are day after day grinding bone on bone.”
“You’re trying to fit me in the kind of deal you had with Rowley. See each other three, four times a week, all needs serviced. No thanks. That’s not an I-Thou relationship, that’s an insurance policy.”
“It isn’t the same now—obviously! But start off with two opinionated people used to living alone and having their own way—”
“Shut up! Don’t bargain with me! Forget it!” He ground his teeth in rage.
They drove forever on the tollroad. She could not fall asleep or pull herself together. What did she want? She could not tell if she wanted him. In the burnt ends of her nerves she wanted another body against her. She wanted to hold somebody and sleep. Finally they were in Chicago on the inner drive. Huge red lips hung puckered advertising a rugcleaner. On the left a sign: SUPPORT YOUR MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY CAMPAIGN: HELP KEEP CHICAGO CLEAN.
They were home. They sat on the bed. He was grinning, looking at her sideways. She burst out, “Oh, you have me on a hook!”
“What’s the name of the hook?”
“Maybe it will never have a name.”
“Remember your fairy tales. Name the dwarf and he goes away.”
“Proving you can kill anything with words.” She began unpinning her hair. One by one she took out the pins.
“Once upon a time there was a lion who lived in a bedroom …” His voice was patient, weary.
“What did he look like?”
“Oh, sad colored with snotty eyes. Don’t interrupt. Now this lion could only tell lies. He couldn’t even tell he was lying, because everything he thought was a
lie. He didn’t know how he’d got into the bedroom and how to get out. He only knew that it was getting colder and colder.”
Handing him the last pin she shook her heavy hair free. “That it is.”
“One day a little girl came in who liked to tame lions. And she fed the lion and patted his mane and asked him if he liked that.” With one finger he touched her loose hair.
“What did he say?”
“Oh, he lied, because he could only tell lies. Don’t interrupt. So the little girl and the lion lived happily ever after in the bedroom. But after they’d lived ever after for a while, the liontaming little girl kept asking the lion to let her put her head in his mouth. The little girl kept telling the lion how she used to do that in a circus and everyone would applaud. The lion kept saying No. She would pull on his tail and climb on his mane and ask and ask to put her head in the lion’s mouth. Finally one day the lion said, Okay baby. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and the little girl stuck her head in. And the lion bit it off. Then he ate her down to the little toe.”
“He was much lion.” Anna tilted her head letting her hair fall forward over her cheeks.
“The moral of the story is, there is only one way to get the lion’s inside story.”
“The little girl had perverse tastes—as did the lion. However, I’ve heard variants—one ending with a furcoat. As well as quite another. But don’t let me interrupt.”
And they looked at each other with bleak but unflinching interest.
Leon
Our Lady of the Nikes
He had had to film in black and white. He was content except for the statue itself which had been recently regilded. He wanted that gold.
Columbia stood in Jackson Park near a missile installation, an enormous figure bearing aloft a large bushy cross and an eagle perched with its claws dug into the world. She wore voluminous robes and had a small head. In the sun she flashed and blinded, visible for blocks and though labeled the Republic, obviously a goddess of Empire.
The camera dwelt on her size, her glitter and flash. The camera crept up and circled humbly far at the three-stepped base from which rose another stone base mounting up to her robe-hidden feet. Overhead jets streamed in military formations for Armed Forces Day.
Before her came a pimply-faced hood. He was miserably dressed, baggy where he should have been tight, and pinched where he should have swaggered. He was covered with scars and the memories of scars. He was ugly and misshapen and his skin looked as if it were covered with a layer of eraser crumbs. At her base he knelt, looking up at her gold. He extended his arms, he beat his breast, he pantomimed his misery. The goddess stood remote with her head in the slanting sun near the bombers and interceptor-fighters. Finally he rose and skulked away into the park.
As the sun was setting, the hood returned bringing with him an unwilling old man. Once again he addressed the Lady, invoking her. Then for the Lady’s edification he began to beat the old man slowly and ritually, with continual shy glances up at her remote small perfect head. The old man tried from time to time to spoil the boy’s style. He groveled, he dragged at the boy, he made himself limp and wept and embraced the boy’s legs. The old man even staggered to his feet and for a minute or two clumsily fought back.
The boy knocked out the old man’s remaining teeth, broke his arms, legs and jaw, plucked out his eyes and hair and smashed his skull on the pedestal. Finally he burned the old, man, crumpled but still living, at the base. At this juncture as the boy dropped exhausted, bloodspattered, at the end of his poor abilities and strength, while overhead the jets still proudly tore the skies, the statue fleetingly nodded. The boy half rose, took a position on his knees. An aura of soft light suffused the scene. The boy hid his face in his hands through which slowly tears flowed.
Rowley
Saturday–Friday, December 6–12
Saturday: The tombs cast blue shadows on the bright crust of snow. On the blacktop road sparrows hopped among puddles and pigeons. Names of fortunes winked from classic portals—names of streets and theaters and hotels and University buildings and department stores.
“Hundred years back when they were making Lincoln Park from a cemetery on the outskirts of town, they dug up the stiffs and moved them here. The fashionable boneyard for decades.” He paused before a pyramid four times their height, complete with poker-faced Germanic sphinx. Vera gave him a look of complicity and disbelief. He said, “‘The grave’s a fine and private place/But none I think do there embrace.’ Just like your livingroom.” But this noon she had let him kiss her. From indifference? She had told him he reminded her of Nancy and laughed at him almost with affection. Who was Nancy? One of her pupils. “A tough one, a bad girl. She arches her back and digs in and nothing can move her. She’ll be the death of me yet.”
She stared at the guardian sphinx with delight: but when he took her hand she hopped away. “Don’t be pulling on me.”
“At least you’ll admit nobody’s staring here.” Sometimes he thought she could become a recluse, hole up in her room with its windows full of sky and never venture farther than her classroom of children. She always had excuses for not going somewhere. “People think it’s shameful that Arab women wear veils,” she told him. “I wouldn’t mind that one bit. Then every animal on the street couldn’t wipe his dirty eyes on me.”
Her coat was a deep vivid blue, her face less closed than usual. Long neck, precise-cropped head against the background of snow, delicate dark face. She walked easily as a deer.
Pullman’s tall Corinthian pillar. “A much hated man. Built himself an ideal company town—couldn’t get a glass of beer in the place; he resold—at a profit—city gas and water, and even their humble turds he used for fertilizer on his farms. Everything was uptight until he lowered wages and kept the rents high, claiming no connection. Anyhow, when he died they brought out the body secretly in the night. Coffin covered with tar to seal it. Enormous pit dug, concrete poured, coffin lowered, steel girders crisscrossed over, and the whole shebang filled in with concrete. Safe till the first H-bomb.”
“Suppose there was a last judgment and he couldn’t get out?” Her thin fleeting smile.
Pond, winter frozen. Little castles of death on this inner circle. Ionic temple of the Potter Palmers. Ryerson moneybox with polished stone sides in which they saw themselves passing. That was Sullivan too. “Still, you have to thank the ostentation for something. Of the pitiful few buildings Sullivan was allowed to build, every year more are torn down. Like the Walker Warehouse. Used to dig going by it, anonymous, just, solid. Like a second-grade teacher—she doesn’t have to be pretty, but what a nice surprise that she is.”
She looked with amazed eyes at an angel of death recording under a colonnade. Streak of her breath on the crisp air. Her velvet lips slightly parted. “You think it’s funny that I teach. Me too. Sometimes I think I’m hired to stand there and paint them all gray. Layers and layers of institutional paint, battleship gray, over their mind.”
“There! Sullivan built that for a woman—you see?”
She stood at the intersection of service roads looking at the Getty Tomb, pale limestone lighter and less dense than the snow that lay on its cornice, tomb that flowered and danced. Her face went blank and sulky until he thought he had failed with her again. Then she gave that clear china laugh and went rapidly around it kicking up plumes of snow with her boots, kicking up the snow and grinning. Her legs were slim, the boots slim. She played in the snow like a kid. Around she went in the triangle of trees, poking at the smooth blocks of the base, the snowflake designs, the intricate diminishing arches of windows and door. The bronze doors stopped her, foliage colored with verdigris. “All right, you win!”
“What do I win?”
“You don’t find that out till the game is over.”
He quoted, talking it to the rhythm:
“‘Bring me flowers while I’m living, please don’t bring them when I’m dead,
And bring them to my bedside, ooh,
well, to cool my achin’ head.
Don’t bring me flowers after I’m dead, a dead man sure can’t smell,
And if I don’t go to heaven, I sure won’t need no flowers in hell …’”
“Rowley? Look inside.” She pressed against the twin gates crowned with foliage. “The door. Oh!” Drawing off her gloves she wriggled her slender wrist through the space between the gates straining to touch the design that flowed over the door, a graceful wreathed calligraphic image of seeding life. “I could live here.”
“He was big on natural cycles, never forgetting decay. He wanted buildings that expressed and didn’t repress.”
“Don’t tell me what to see.” Once again she circled, kicking up snow, patting the sides, and fingering the interstices of cut stone. “Your Mr. Sullivan, was he young when he made this?”
“He had his success young. Then the taste went to Roman banks and civic centers. The Columbian Exposition did it. A commission a year for country banks in Ohio or Iowa. Buildings grew ripe in his head and rotted there.” He led her off the road across unmarked snow. Reddish stone. “Friends put that up later. He couldn’t afford a stone. Died in a flophouse where Lake Meadows stands today—those flashy blank-looking buildings.”
He sat on the small cushion-shaped stone for Louis, and she, submissive for once, sat down on his mother. “He haunts me. This was his city. He came here young, learned whatever he could be taught; made it big, and lost—to a Roman dream of empire he couldn’t fight, a dream of empire that stinks in the air and the newspaper still. He went on losing for thirty years. Once he spoke about dying, leaving so little, what he called a few seeds under snow, when he was so filled with fertility. When I read that I wanted to knock my head on the wall. Buildings to him were honest or dishonest, like the society that pays for them. The Chicago they wouldn’t let him build haunts me.”
“You believe in history.” She smiled faintly. “You talk about Chicago. Maybe it’s different cities that have occupied the same space. City filled with people who don’t see it, don’t know it, lacks a history.”