Vida

by Marge Piercy

  ”Do you want to watch the little TV?” Joel asked as he changed the sheets, damp again from her sweating, and tucked her in.

  “I can’t remember anything I saw before, so what’s the use?”

  … “Jimmy”“ she said, shaking him. “Jimmy!” But the top of his head was missing. Inside was black and sticky, like burned cereal, she thought, and let him fall back. She was crawling on her belly among the burning wreckage, the fallen roof the smoldering timbers of the house. When she saw the next body, she could not turn it over. She could not. She did not want to see. She kept crawling. Somebody was moaning. Somebody still must be alive in the wreckage, if she kept crawling and could get to them. But when she came to the protruding bloody leg and dug at the rubble with her hands, uncovering first the torso and then the broken head, it was Jimmy again. The top of his head blown away. The burst jellies of his eyes. She could not bring him to life or escape from him. Then she heard footsteps coming on the rubble, wavering …

  Gradually as the weekend passed she stayed conscious more, as pieces of their situation began to return to her. Joel was sleeping on the floor in his sleeping bag. She knew she was something of a nuisance, occupying Jan’s study, but Jan seemed to survive studying in the bedroom. She became aware that Joel was working hard to make himself useful. He cooked several meals—his chicken again, lasagna, spaghetti—took out the garbage, shopped, did the dishes every night, carried the laundry off to Seventh Avenue to be washed. She was aware she had surrendered to inertia. She welcomed the flu that Pelican told her she had. Her body ached, she sweated, she coughed and wheezed, she was miserable and yet content to be ill. Here in the heart of the enemy camp she had collapsed to let her will recuperate. She was in no hurry to get back on the road. She wanted to relinquish, to be taken care of, to remain passive.

  “Listen” Joel drew up a chair to the couch. “Our problems are over. I’m getting us money.”

  “You got a temporary job?”

  “Only me and a million others are looking for that …No, I got a great deal cooking.”

  “What kind of a deal?” Gasping for breath, she sat up. Suddenly she remembered Ruby. She had let them all go—Natalie, Leigh, Ruby, Paul.

  “I got a chance to make three, maybe four hundred.”

  “What kind of a deal?” she repeated.

  ”A little snow.”

  “Cocaine.”

  “Pretty good, too. My friend Mel gave me a snort.”

  “Who is Mel?” She straightened her back. Her side stabbed, but she set her feet on the floor.

  “I have friends in New York too, see. You think you’re the only one with friends in the Big Apple, but I know him from Berkeley.”

  “Friends in the drug trade” She felt a flash of anger at having to come back to life. She was not ready to resume the work of living; but she must.

  “Don’t be supermoral. You smoke dope. What’s wrong with coke?”

  “That world swims with narcs. We can’t afford to deal with drugs—we can’t take those risks.”

  “The battery’s dead in the car. We need a new battery. Pelican and I have to shove Mariah across the street to keep her from being towed. How many times can we do that? We’re running on our spare. When another tire goes, we’ve had it. We need money, we need it now.”

  “Money won’t help if they catch us. No more of those friends, Joel. We can’t afford them”

  “It’s just acting as courier. Running a shipment to Springfield and another to Worcester. Nothing could be simpler.”

  “Don’t call them again. Don’t get in touch. Don’t see them. Just hope they didn’t trace you here.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Many chances.” She rose, had a spasm of coughing and sat again, her knees giving way. “I better start eating” From that moment she began to recover. She fought her weakness, but her convalescence dragged on. She could not stay out of bed for more than two or three hours before she had to lie down again for an hour; further, she was still running a low-grade fever. She began to want to leave the house, but Jan had objections. Finally Vida focused on her. Jan’s hair was brown, as it had begun to be in Natalie’s old consciousness-raising group, but it was waved becomingly around her face. She was more confident in her mannerisms, louder and jollier in her voice. Now she wore sweaters and tweedy pant suits and looked healthy and brisk in them. Jan was in her third year of medical school and had begun hospital work.

  “V … Vinnie, you can’t march around Park Slope. Half the old New York Movement live around here. No chance somebody won’t recognize you.”

  “You don’t think I look different by now?”

  ”Sort of … but then you stare, and if you stare enough, you figure it out … Joel can go out. But you have to stay in the house.”

  “Jan, I’m going to have to borrow money from you to get our car fixed. If I can’t walk out of the house, we’re going to have to get the car fixed before I can get us on our feet financially … There are people I have to see”

  “Borrow our car. I go into Manhattan on the subway. Bob needs it for work, but he’s on night shift. During the day, borrow it … I’d loan you money if I could, but we’ve been sinking every penny into the house just paying off the mortgage. We’re a couple of months behind on the bills … Once I’m through school, we’ll have less of a problem, but in the meantime I spend rather than earn … So we’re short. If my father didn’t help us, we couldn’t make it month to month.”

  Both Pelican and Jan were always telling her, as if they were still arguing with themselves, how important it was for political people to go into health care. Pelican as a nurse seemed more secure, Jan as a potential doctor more nervous and eager to justify her choice. After breakfast with Jan, Joel drove Vida into Flatbush, where she found a booth. She could not yet drive. Even walking to the parked car exhausted her, and she lay back against the seat of Jan and Bob’s orange Honda. Calling Leigh felt onerous but she had to get money from him. In the whole last year she had had only about three hundred sixty from him. That hardly represented a strain on his finances. What would he say about his marriage? Would he assume she knew? She dreaded the moment she heard his voice, her heart thumping in her throat. She had not told Joel she was calling Leigh, because she lacked the strength for an argument.

  She called the first of the numbers. It rang and rang. She checked her watch. Should have called Time this morning to set it exactly. Then she tried the other number. After it had rung about seven times, she heard it answered. “Leigh?” she burst out.

  “Lady, you got the wrong number. This is a fucking pay phone.” The man slammed down the receiver.

  Shit. She waited five minutes by her watch. Then she knew she was past ten. He was punctual usually; what could be holding him up? She dialed the first number again, and again it rang and rang until she did not dare let it ring longer. She waited two more minutes and dialed the second. It was answered on the third ring. “Get off of here” the same voice said. “You bozos are ringing into a pay phone.”

  Three more times she tried the first number. Then it was a full quarter after the hour of ten and she knew that Leigh had not made the rendezvous. That was the first time he had ever missed an appointment with her. Once when they were to meet he had not shown up because he was being followed, but never had he failed a phone connection. Now she could do nothing but wait till the next day and try again, same time, same numbers. She dreaded more confrontations with the loud nut who kept answering the second number. Attracting that kind of attention was dangerous. Why wasn’t Leigh on the spot? Because of heat? Trouble? Or was he backing out? She found herself shaking, but she did not know whether it was with fear or with anger as she stumbled back to the orange Honda and Joel.

  “Jan …” she cleared her throat. “I wonder if you could call my sister Natalie? I have to find out how my mother’s doing”

  Jan’s full face grew long with some suppressed reaction “How can I call her?”

 
; “Really, it’s all right. Don’t say anything about me. Just ask about my mother. Ask if the appointment for next Monday can go in the other direction. Have you got that?”

  “But—Natalie’s in jail … I thought you knew.”

  “In jail?”

  “They gave her immunity, and when she wouldn’t testify, they cited her for contempt. Her lawyer’s appealing on some fancy ground that the whole grand jury’s illegal, but she sure is inside. I thought you knew. Joel does.”

  He had been protecting her in her chosen isolation. “No, he didn’t tell me.”

  Jan patted her arm. “He loves you a lot. He’s much nicer than Kevin that you ran off with”

  “I didn’t run off with Kevin any more than I ran off with Jimmy. We just ran. We had to.”

  “Of course, Leigh’s a wonderful speaker. But he’s a little cold. You know”

  She could not resist asking, “Did you go to their wedding?”

  “No. Leigh’s a bit of a star. When he was doing that series on health care, he called us for some leads, but it wasn’t social … I never met her. I saw them together at a big benefit party”

  “Is she pretty?”

  Jan nodded. “But Leigh looks around, and she looks only at Leigh. That scene.”

  They were pushing the dead Mariah around by hand, living in fear of a neighbor’s reporting it abandoned and the car’s being towed. They had to get money—she knew it. “Jan, what have you heard about our old friend Oscar?” She had a moment of wondering if she was sticking her hand in a sore place, but that was a very old fracture. “You don’t mind me asking?”

  “He’s gay now, you know?” Jan made a small face. “It’s hard not to think, maybe we turned him off women?” She laughed then. “We’re friendly, but we don’t bump into each other a lot. He’s got tenure at Richmond. I remember a battle about it … Gee, I ran into him in the Village in September. Every so often I see him on Channel 13 commenting on the balance of payments or the banks’ takeover of the city, but I can’t say I know much. Bob and I don’t get a lot of time to socialize, and can mostly we see other people in health care …”

  “Is he still living on Avenue B?”

  “Far as I know. He’s been there forever.”

  She called the college and got his schedule. Now all she had to do was borrow the Honda and intercept him at the ferry when he came over from Manhattan. Jan was silly to lend her the car, which would link them if she should be caught. She had figured out by now that Jan could give her any-thing—her apartment, meals, a bed, her car, medication— but money. Jan’s squeamishness about her coming professional status took the form of an unwillingness to admit she was no longer dirt-poor. In fact, her family was so happy she was married and respectable that they sent monthly checks, and Pelican made a decent living. Jan would lend them the Honda, but she would not give them two dollars to put gas in it.

  She wanted to argue with Jan that her penury with money and generosity with things was irrational and even dangerous, but when she was sponging off someone, she walked around their eccentricities rather than through them. She skirted areas of disagreement. Joel was much better at smoothing over than she was, and gradually he had taken over most negotiations, such as when they would get the Honda and for how long.

  She had no idea whether Oscar would respond to her sudden materialization with pleasure or horror, but she would have to risk his reaction. She had not been chummy with him the year before she had become a fugitive; in fact, the last time she had seen him at a regional meeting, she had called him whatever insults they were laying on everybody they considered cowards that year. She took Joel along to Staten Island mostly to keep an eye on him, for she knew he was still brooding about the cash to be made as a cocaine courier. She had only to exaggerate her weakness slightly. The fatigue of years seemed condensed in her limbs. Joel agreed to come because she had let him know that Oscar had been her lover; let him know as she was trying to sleep and he was interrogating her: “Oh, you wrote stuff together … Did you find him attractive? … Did he ever try to make you? … How often did this happen? … Why did you sleep with him, if you didn’t love him? …Oh, you did: love him. My, my, you’ve certainly ‘loved’ thousands, haven’t you?”

  Off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Oz was what she had called Oscar, while she loved him. After Kevin she had given no one a pet name. He had soured her on nicknames. Almost she wanted to address everyone as Mr. Pfeiffer or Ms. Sforza. In bed he had been more of a Teddy bear than a passionate lover, but the affection had been real. Would he still be angry about 1970? As they drove across the Verrazano Bridge, the day bright and glittering, ships at anchor in the bay, a tanker steaming under them out to sea high in the water, sea gulls among the cables, the question was not idle. Some old acquaintances once comrades hated the Movement people who had turned to direct violent action. Many had disagreed with them, but some hated them passionately for the very challenge they had thrown to the others to fight against the war with every means possible. Vida had been warned that Bob Rossi had said that he would beat the shit out of any of them who dared show up. Great, she thought, I hope he sends out public challenges like that to David Rockefeller. Until she made contact, she never knew. It was best to send a go-between to test the temperature, but she had no time to work out safe passage.

  They parked near the ferry and waited. He was not on the next two. Obviously Oscar was not arriving excessively early for his classes. It was approaching ten, when she had to try her call to Leigh. From the phone booth she kept an eye on the ferry exit. Today the first number was busy and she felt a pang of hope. She kept calling the second. At least today no one answered to yell at her. Finally the first was not busy and rang. Nobody. Today her watch was exactly on time; she had called N-E-R-V-O-U-S before leaving Jan’s. Nevertheless, she kept calling the two pay phones until she saw Oscar strolling toward her. Quickly she slipped out of the booth, then halted. He had a young man with him. They had the stopped walking and seemed to be arguing, not in anger but vehemently. Oscar waved his arm back toward the ferry, laughing. The young man kissed him and then returned to the boat, waving over his shoulder and stopping to blow a kiss.

  Joel came up from behind her, where she had stationed him, having guessed from her expression that she had found Oscar and was watching him. “He’s gay, huh? You didn’t mention that little fact.”

  “But Joel, what difference does it make?” She wasn’t sure herself. Once his friend was back in the ferry building and Oscar began walking briskly, she moved to intercept him. Approaching on the sidewalk, she caught his eye. At once he looked away. Then, startled, he looked at her again. Looked away. Looked back. His pace slowed and he went walking from the knees mechanically, staring again. What fun to be a walking ghost, she thought. Hi, there, Oz, thought I was in heaven or hell? No, here I am, the ghost of revolutions half past, come to haunt your academic peace. She forced a tentative smile, keeping eye contact. “Good morning, Oz.” Was that a bad move, the old endearment? Looking for the right button to push on a stranger once your friend, once your comrade, once your lover, on a cold windy street in uncertain time.

  Many minute events were happening behind Oscar’s broad forehead. His hair was still curly and dark beneath a jaunty suede cap. He had an unlit pipe clenched in his teeth, drooping awkwardly. She hung back, waiting. “Hello,” he said, stopping in front of her. Peering into her face. “I know I know you …”

  “Not for many years. Not since 1970”

  “I thought so.” He looked a bit glum, sucking on the cold pipe. “What brings you back to the city?”

  “I’m only here briefly and, of course, unofficially. I am still enjoying an unofficial existence, you might say”

  “I wasn’t sure, what with half one’s notorious old friends popping up nowadays” His gaze flicked past her to Joel, hovering. “Is he with you?”

  “My friend. Terry, meet Oscar” She did not give her current name, waiting to judge hi
s attitude. Oscar shook hands with Joel, looking slightly more relaxed. “It’s good you’re not traveling alone” Had he been afraid she had sprung up from the past to plague him in a personal way? An old lover demanding blood sacrifice? “I can’t put you up” he said. “I’m still in my tiny pad on Avenue B, and I have someone staying there with me.”

  “That must be the friend I saw saying goodbye at the ferry.” She was sure Oscar must be out of the closet. “We have a place to stay”“

  He looked further relieved, pausing to light his pipe. “Yes, we’re in stage of things where taking the ferry with me is a romantic, venture at this ungodly hour. Of course, by next month it will be Don’t make so much noise when you get out of bed, you’re giving me a headache. How are you?”

  “And what do I want, turning up in your path?”

  “Well, yes, that too. Of course, I’m delighted to see you alive and well. I’d heard that you were in Cuba, that you’d been shot in Mexico and that you’d had a sex-change operation and married a princess.”

  ”All true, of course. We’re only in the city for a couple of days, Oscar, and my name is Vinnie. We’re having some trouble …”

  “Money?” He raised a thick eyebrow.

  “We’re looking for a job” Joel said. “We can do anything somebody might need. Any ideas?”

  “Could be,” Oscar said. “What kind of work?”

  “You tell us,” Joel said. “We need money and we need it bad.”

  “I don’t require any banks robbed” Oscar said teasingly, and strolled on with one of them on each side. “However, let me think about it”

  “Is there a pay phone where we can set up a call?” she asked.

  “Don’t be melodramatic. Just call my office at the college—you don’t think they have the college tapped, do you?”

  “It makes me nervous to call a radical’s phone.”

  “I’m an academic radical, quite respectable. I even have tenure, though they tried like hell to withhold it. But I have three books out, and The Political Economy of the New Banking has gone into its third edition. Have you had a chance to glance at it?”