Woman on the Edge of Time

by Marge Piercy

  “Where do you want to call?”

  “Bound Brook, New Jersey.”

  “Calling out of state, you can’t do that.”

  “But I got the change. Just to my brother. Look, see, please, he’s on my visiting list.”

  “Has he been around?”

  “No, but he promised.”

  “Why do you want to call him?”

  Your life was everybody’s business to rummage through. “I just want to talk about how his family is. To tell him I’m better. Maybe to talk about if they won’t come and see me at Thanksgiving.”

  “Okay. But no trouble. I don’t want you pestering your family from here.”

  There was a terrible line by the phone, nine people ahead of her. Talking to Luis was no pleasure anytime, but she had to work on him about Thanksgiving. They had to let her out for the holiday, they just had to. She didn’t give a wink for a stuffed bird; they could stuff it with dollar bills and eat it with a sauce of Arpege. But she had to grasp the chance to run, before they operated on her. That one chance skinnier than a hair, than one of her own lost black hairs.

  For an hour and twenty minutes she stood on one foot and then the other, waiting for the telephone. She was sweating with fear it would be time to line up for evening meds before she ever got her hands on the telephone. Finally she dialed. Don’t let it be busy, she begged. Santa María, please let them be home and don’t let it be busy and make Luis answer in a good mood, I beg of you, please!

  “Hello?”

  Carefully she pronounced the name the Anglo way, the way he liked it. “Loo-is? Hello, is this Lewis?”

  “Yeah, who’s this? Who am I talking to?”

  “It’s Connie. Your sister.”

  “Yeah?” A nice heavy silence like an avalanche of mud slid through the phone.

  Desperately she forged on. “I’m calling from the hospital. They say I’m much better. Lewis, they say I’m much better and I feel really good.”

  “That’s nice. You got in a good hospital now, you know that? It’s a first-rate hospital. If they were making you pay for it, you couldn’t walk in the front door, you know that?”

  “Sure, Lewis. How’s the family? How’s Adele? How’s Mike and Susan?” For an awful minute she thought she had the name of the new baby wrong. She had only been to Luis’s home once since the baby was born. Maybe it wasn’t Susan at all?

  “Mike’s fine, he’s talking all the time now, give me this, give me that! He’s his mother’s kid, all right. Susan’s teething, so she squawks all the time, but she’s pretty as a picture. She’s a real blond, yellow hair straight as a ruler. She’s going to be a winner, this one.”

  “That’s good, Lewis, that’s wonderful. I wish I could see Susan. I wish I could see you. How’s Adele?”

  “She’s fine. She got a new foxtail coat. Good-looking. She wanted mink but she’s going to want that for a long time, if business doesn’t pick up. It’s a bad time for the nursery business, all over. People aren’t spending money the way they did two, three years ago, construction is way down. Except for fruit trees. Lot of people are putting fruit trees in their yards in the suburbs. We’ve tripled our business in fruit trees. But that’s like a one-time thing. People don’t buy a new apple tree every year.”

  “Dolly came in to see me, she said maybe you might come?”

  “Sure, Connie. Just it’s hard to get the time. Weekends are the only time and the traffic is miserable.”

  “Maybe I could come to you, then … Lewis.” She almost slipped and said Luis in her excitement. “Maybe for Thanksgiving I could visit you? I wouldn’t be any work. I could help Adele. I’d love to see the babies.”

  “Yeah?” He didn’t add anything, till the operator interrupted. She stuck in more coins. She had saved a good supply.

  “At least maybe for a day, Lewis, for Thanksgiving, just overnight? It’s so lonely in the hospital at holiday time. A real family holiday. Everybody goes home. The doctor says I’m much better. You could talk to him, Dr. Redding. Please, Lewis?”

  “We’ll see. You’d have to go back Saturday morning because Saturday night we’re giving a party. But you could help around some. We’ll have enough food to feed an army, we always do … .”

  “I could help Adele cook and clean. You know I can cook real well, Lewis, remember? I can help you get ready for the party. It’s a lot of work for Adele.”

  “Oh, she has a woman in once a week.”

  “But for the holidays, it’s a lot of work. I can help and I wouldn’t mind going back Saturday. I wouldn’t mind at all. That would just be so lovely, to come and see you all Thanksgiving.”

  “Well, we might do that. I’ll talk to the doctor.”

  “Dr. Redding, Dr. Redding, please?” She was trotting alongside to get his attention. “I talked to my brother, and him and his wife, they’d take me for Thanksgiving. I could have Thanksgiving dinner with them? It would be so nice. You said I’m better.”

  “Does your brother want you there?”

  “He said yes. He said he did. He said I could help his wife.” She trotted alongside. “He said he’ll call you about it.”

  “He hasn’t. We’ll see.” He dismissed her with a brusque nod. “Morgan, has Moynihan taken a reading on her this week? I want to keep her monitored.”

  As Dr. Morgan took her off to Miss Moynihan’s EEG machine, he commented on the cologne. “Is that for me?” he said, laughing at her as if she were an idiot. “How nice!” He made fun of her all the time because he wasn’t afraid of her; she was too small to scare him the way Sybil did and Alice had.

  For the EEG testing, she was taken off ward and up two floors. Always in the elevator her heart beat quickly and she imagined the opportunity of going down instead of going up, and out into the streets, whose gutters were full of the torrents of cold November rain. Miss Moynihan had made her leave her wig and purse behind, but she could still bolt if given a moment, a door.

  Miss Moynihan was going to use the second room, with the ten-track machine on her today. Connie was so used to the routine by now she sat docile as at a beauty parlor while Miss Moynihan combed apart what little hair she had and marked her targets, used the jelly and the tape to glue the electrodes on, then slapped a gauze pad over. The wires led off to the chart on a machine near her head as she lay down and Miss Moynihan slid a rolled-up towel under her neck. Then Miss Moynihan turned the lights very dim. She had a patter she used that was supposed to relax the patients. “Now, here we go today. You’re an old hand at this by now. Just relax. But don’t you go to sleep on me. Just relax and get a little beauty rest … .”

  Miss Moynihan sat outside the cubicle at the machine, whose ten pens scribbled away as the accordion piles of paper raced out from the face covered with dials. Miss Moynihan spoke in a carefully flat tone to her. “Close your eyes … . Open your mouth slightly … . Open your eyes … .” As the pens rushed on, she wrote obscure notations that always made Connie terribly suspicious.

  She had her favorite fantasy as she lay there. Miss Moynihan would be called away. She would be called to the phone. A family emergency. Did she have a family? Yes, patient gossip had it that her mother was dead, her father worked for the subway, her older brother was a building inspector, and her younger brother was still in school … . “Try not to move your eyes so much or I’ll have to tape them. Relax. Open your mouth again slightly and keep it that way.”

  Miss Moynihan would be called to the phone and she would sit up at once, pull the electrodes off, and quietly walk past the two desks in the outer room, where sometimes a woman sat and sometimes no one at all, turn right, and bolt down the stairway at the end of the hall. She could see herself doing that again and again … . “Try to relax, Mrs. Ramos. Just let yourself go. Relax.”

  She would walk south to Harlem through the beautiful clean rain. Miss Moynihan’s father could not stand Acker, the patients said. Romeo and Juliet A doomed romance. Miss Moynihan had beautiful soft gray eyes, in which
everything seemed to dissolve. She bustled about, efficient, hard, bouncy, but in her eyes chaos swirled. Connie decided Miss Moynihan was hoping to get pregnant. With so many beds in a hospital, it must be easy for them to make love … . Miss Moynihan tapped on the machine, hard taps, as if she could read her mind. They tapped that way sometimes. She never understood why. Did Miss Moynihan think she was falling asleep? Suppose she suddenly went over to Mattapoisett—what would Miss Moynihan’s machine show? Was Luciente dead? Why did she never feel her anymore?

  It was the week before Thanksgiving. Captain Cream had had the final operation and sat about with a bandage on his head. He had to be dressed and he ate so slowly he drove Tony wild. He ate almost as much as Alice. Connie had the feeling, watching him, that he would go on eating all day at the same maddeningly slow rate as long as they stuck food in front of him. He would go on doing whatever he was started doing. If he was taken to the toilet, he would sit there until somebody remembered to fetch him off. Alice slumped in the lounge, withdrawn and creepy. Orville, with an implant, made jokes no one else found funny and giggled all day. Alvin called them the three stooges, but he did not seem to find that funny himself. Alvin was scheduled for surgery the next Monday, along with Miss Green. He would have been done already, but Dr. Redding had won his invitation to Dr. Argent’s hunting lodge, and took off a long weekend.

  Connie worked at being a model patient. She did jigsaw puzzles, she watched television, she entered all conversations, she asked advice and agreed, she kept her wig straight on her itchy scalp and tended it like a prize poodle. She volunteered and volunteered. She was ward housewife. Next time she asked she got permission easily to call her brother.

  The line was longer, everyone with the same problem, whining, begging, trying to charm. Only one thought fizzled through the whole spacy line. When she got to the phone, the damn number was busy. By the time she got back near the head again, it was lights out.

  The next night, after an hour and ten minute wait, she got through. “Lewis, it’s me, Connie, again. I was just wondering about Thanksgiving?”

  “Yeah, maybe Christmas. How’re you doing?”

  “The doctor says I’m better—did you talk to him? What’s wrong with Thanksgiving? Christmas is so far away.” By Christmas she’d be operated on. “Remember, I was going to help Adele cook and clean and get ready for your party? Please. Lewis, please!”

  “You’ve never proved much of a worker, Connie. There’s a lot of work to do. We’d probably do better having the cleaning woman put in an extra day.”

  “I’ll work, Lu—Lewis, I’ll work! Ask them here if I don’t clean up the whole ward. If I don’t sweep and mop up and dust. I learned a lesson, please let me show you. I want so bad to get out for Thanksgiving!”

  “Guess it’s lonely in the hospital, huh, Connie?” He was playing cat and mouse with her.

  Her hand sweated on the greasy receiver. The gray butter of human anxiety. “Please, my brother, let me visit you. Let me help Adele. Let me see my nephew and my niece. I’ll clean and cook. I’ll do the dishes. I’ll make the house shine!”

  “You never were much of a housekeeper, unless they taught you something. Besides, we’re fixing the house up with a tropical motif, going to put plants everywhere. You don’t like to work around the nursery, remember? You said the sprays gave you a headache.”

  “That was years ago! I’ll work so hard you’d have to hire four men to do the work I’ll do for you. Just let me out of here for a couple of days. Just let me be with you a little!”

  “I’ll take it under advisement. Don’t call again. I’ll let the hospital know if I decide to give it a try.” He hung up.

  Shaking with anger, she left the pay phone. She despised herself for begging to be given the privilege of scrubbing Luis’s floors in Bound Brook. Claud would have stopped speaking to her if he’d heard that conversation; he’d have taken off like a shot. But it is war, she thought. I am conducting undercover operations. I am behind enemy lines and I must wear a smiling mask. It is all right for me to beg and crawl and wheedle because I am at war. They will see how I forgive. That made her feel stronger.

  Sybil was waiting for her in the lounge. “What did he say?”

  “Maybe, he said. He wouldn’t let me off the hook by letting me know one way or the other.”

  Sybil touched her shoulder lightly. “Well, Thanksgiving together … I’ve had worse.”

  Only Alice, Captain Cream, and Connie were let out on Thanksgiving furlough to relatives. Connie put on her old turquoise dress that fitted a little loose, and straightened the new wig on her head. Everybody was clucking and cooing over her except Sybil, who hung back, and Alice, who sat like a wrapped present in the hall, waiting. Sybil managed to catch Connie for a moment to whisper, “I hope you … fly away.”

  “I’m going to try.”

  Briefly, before the attendant could catch them (“No PC!”—physical contact—the slogan of the ward), they kissed. “I hope I never see you again,” Sybil whispered. “My dear friend, run!”

  Luis’s house had an upstairs, a downstairs, and a level in between, most of it open space without doors or walls, like a big hospital ward. Rooms, rooms upon rooms. She was led up stairs covered with gold carpeting that must show dirt easily, to a room on the top floor. She had a bathroom all to herself, with a shower and a toilet and a wash basin and a mirror, a full-length mirror on the back of the door. She had not seen herself entire in months. The basin was like a vanity table, everything white with gold trim.

  The room had twin beds, and she felt dizzy at the thought of choosing one or the other. For a moment tears burned the inside of her eyes. She blinked. Why should a bed make her cry? For months she had not chosen anything. Luis dropped her little overnight bag on one bed, so she decided to sleep in the other. She felt relieved. So much space around her, it was almost frightening. It made her dizzy, it distracted her as if it were freedom instead of fancier imprisonment.

  The room had one window, covered with filmy blue curtains and white and gold Venetian blinds. Quickly she pried two of the slats apart to look out. Ay, too bad! She stared down two stories onto a concrete paved area floodlit by a fixture high on the house. An outdoor fireplace was set into one side of the area, before the yard sloped away into shrubbery. No way out through this window.

  The yard was elegantly planted, with borders swooping in and out in drifts of pine and juniper, but in the night and the cold, it looked only bleak. The ground was frozen and bare. Through the glare of light surrounding the house to protect it against burglars, she could not see whether the night was clear or cloudy. She hoped it would not snow. That would make it harder to get away. She wished that Luis had invited her out a few more times in the past so that she knew something of the area. Which way would she walk to get to public transportation? She must figure that out.

  Without knocking, Adele opened the door. “If you want to set the table, we’re going to have pie and coffee before we turn in.”

  They were crazy, for they did just that: drank coffee from a blue and white electric percolator just before going to bed, along with a boughten apple pie. The pie tasted wonderful. She could have eaten the whole thing. A terrible desire to eat and eat and eat seized her throat. Food that had flavors. By shifting to the right in her chair she could see the refrigerator in the kitchen, huge and golden brown. It kept drawing her sleepy gaze, all that golden space crammed with food. She had seen it when she got out the nondairy creamer for their coffee. She had seen the turkey defrosting. The freezer was stacked with steaks and roasts and chops, with vegetables in bright cartons. She had seen gallons of milk, a pound of butter, vegetables in the crispers, salad dressings half used, real eggs, orange juice in cartons. She imagined herself rising slowly from her chair and with her Thorazine shuffle—she had been especially heavily doped that day in preparation for her furlough—stumbling into the kitchen to the refrigerator, sitting down on the floor, and pulling out one item at a time unt
il she had eaten everything in the whole golden box. It all called to her in wonderful soprano siren voices: the jar of olives, the chunky peanut butter, the salami, the liverwurst in the opened package, the jar of maraschino cherries, the cheddar cheese, the packaged dip, the bacon, the eggs, the chocolate pudding from the dairy case, the soda, the big round bright pieces of fruit.

  They seemed to eat very quickly. Luis talked nonstop about his day. He spoke quickly and he talked a lot and he didn’t like interruptions: in that he was like the brother she had had all her life. But this middle-aged overweight businessman in the dark gray suit and the wide tie with its narrow dim stripe, the round moon face bulging into jowls, the forehead that ran well back to the middle of his scalp, the fat fingers with a lodge ring that remained braced on the table as he talked as though he feared if he let go of them they would fly up—did she know him from someplace?

  “‘They all got brown spots on their leaves,’ he says to me. ‘They’re no good. I paid you six hundred to do the foyer and they all got brown spots.’ ‘That was a special price I gave you,’ I said ‘They’re worth twice that now.’ ‘All covered with brown spots,’ he said. ‘Listen,’ ‘I said, I could have done the job with plastic. We have a beautiful selection of plastic. You wanted live ones. Now look, the world is full of diseases and bugs. You could’ve signed up for my service. My boys come around every month regular as clockwork and they mop off the leaves and they exterminate and they put in the fertilizer. We keep it up. Something kicks off, we replace. It’s insurance. But you weren’t interested. Now you complain to me that some pest has got into your greens. Of course some pest got in. What did you think—you can put up a sign and say no insects allowed? You don’t keep up an investment, it’s money down the drain.’” Luis told the story with satisfaction. “Let that fool paint the leaves green. Trying to cut corners with me. When I do a job like that at a competitive price, I expect the service contract.”