Vida

by Marge Piercy

  “I plan to get out of town tonight, but I haven’t the money to leave”

  “Er … have you had a chance to talk to Natalie at all?”

  “Congratulations, you mean?” She sounded tight as a drum. What did she feel? Pain and anger with exhaustion over it all in a numb layer like blubber in a mammal that must make its living from the Arctic seas. Inside, the hot blood boiled far below. “Name it for me, and I guess you’re doing what you want, hey, Leigh? Only I expect you to keep our appointments.”

  He rocked on a boot heel. “What’s going on—some kind of black mail? Showing up like this.”

  “Don’t be an asshole. It’s me that’s in danger. I’m only here because you weren’t on your end of the phone calls”

  ”I can’t go on paying you. You seem to know I’m married and Susannah’s having a baby. She’ll have to quit her job in June.”

  “New commitments do not cancel old commitments.”

  “Face it, damn it, I’m married.”

  “Quite. For all you know, so am I. But you owe me, Leigh.”

  “For how long?”

  “For how long I continue to fight. You get paid for your work. If we’re on the same side, I’m entitled to be paid for mine.”

  “How am I supposed to give you money on the sly? I can’t sneak off to see you any longer.”

  “I’ll give you a contact you’ll pay. You can call it professional expenses, paying an informant, booze money, dope money, anything you want. But I’m not evaporating because you got bored with clandestine rendezvous. You don’t ever have to see me, but you have an obligation.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t want to see you. I never said that!”

  “Give the money to Oscar. Eighty a month.”

  “I can’t hack that, Vinnie. I just can’t.”

  “Fifty, then. I think you can afford it.” She smiled. “Call it alimony”

  “I knew you’d be pissed.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me face to face?”

  “When?”

  “Leigh, there was time to discuss your program, time to talk politics, time to walk in the snow, time to fuck. But no time to be honest.”

  “Are you honest? You just said you might be married”

  “What have you asked me the last year? You act as if you don’t want to know, Leigh.”

  “Maybe I don’t.”

  “Rather watch it on the television some night?”

  “You’re getting nasty … Suppose I do give Oscar fifty a month. For how long?”

  “How long will I be under?”

  “Look, it isn’t as if I begged you to go underground. It isn’t as if I was involved in that harebrained scheme.”

  “We were all involved. You had limits. You were a professional journalist. You could say to yourself, I have to stop at such and so or I’ll lose my job. What was my profession? Fighting the war. Making a revolution, Where was I to stop? At death? We each carried out our duties, but the wages have been different”

  “Is that how you really see it?”

  ”Isn’t that how you see it?”

  “I’ll pass Oscar fifty a month” Leigh glanced pointedly at his watch. “Oscar? How is he mixed up in this?”

  “As an old friend, not as fickle as you. I need cash now, bad, whatever you have.”

  “What am I supposed to do, pretend I got my pocket picked? I don’t go around with a fortune in my wallet.”

  “You seldom have less than a hundred. It’s your habit. I do remember your habits.”

  Grimacing in his beard, he peeled off two twenties and a ten. “That’s your fifty this month. That’s all I got, and I don’t know where it’s coming from.”

  “Sell some of our furniture”

  “Aw, come on. Susannah redecorated the living room in the fall. She bought out Bloomingdale’s. She didn’t like the old stuff”‘

  “My red Cretan hanging. Where is it? Give it to Oscar. I don’t want it over your bed.”

  “Christ, Vi … nnie, Susannah took that down ages ago.”

  “Where is it?”

  “How would I know? I remember her sending it to the cleaner’s.”

  “You give that to Oscar. I’d rather have it over his bed” Beginning to cry, she turned and charged blindly along the crowded sidewalk, bumping passersby, heading west automatically. Roughly she scrubbed her hand across her eyes. She could not afford tears; tears blinded. She had humiliated herself for what? Fifty dollars would hardly get them to the Vermont meeting of the Board. Perhaps this encounter was like scrubbing out an infected sore with strong lye soap, or the iodine that Ruby had always favored: it hurts because it’s helping you. It burns because it’s killing the germs. The infection. Leigh had become an infection. Burn it out.

  She felt like a fool marching to the subway, fever rising in her forehead, her body heavy with fatigue. Joel thought she loved carelessly and casually; he did not see she loved too long and too well. She did not know when to give up, but stuck to a bad bargain. She could try men, taste them, feint, withdraw, but once she had begun to love someone, she let him into her own space, her center, and could not easily pry him out. Endings were bitter to her. Why not? They were deaths. Leigh was dead to her. He had become a fifty-dollar-a-month annuity. Nothing more. She trudged into the subway mouth with the rush-hour crowd.

  20

  Joel and Vida met the lawyer’s client Mrs. Richter, a square-built woman of Vida’s age with big bones, a little voice and a perpetual crease of worry between her soft brown eyes. Joel charmed her, and she agreed before dessert to hire them. They were supposed to appear to do the job within ten days. Vida figured that that gave her enough time to attend the Board meeting, launch her antinuke project if she could steer it through the Board and get back to pick up the advance.

  At her mail drop in New York she found a notice from her lawyer about the divorce, a note from Leigh and one from Eva. The note from Leigh went:

  December 7

  Baby, You caught me by surprise and we both said things we don’t mean. You know I still love you. Remember New Hampshire. I’ll be expecting a call Tuesday at the old numbers. Be seeing you.

  Love, Leigh

  She read it, reread it and tore it in little bits. She would not call. Oscar was amused at his role of go-between and would provide any link with Leigh that might prove necessary, besides what she hoped would be the regular flow of that small amount of money. Eva’s note said she was on her way East for the Board meeting and was stopping to chat and politic along the way. She would like to meet Vida early and suggested Rochester:

  Perry, love. I’m migrating but slowly toward the powwow. Stopping to test the breezes. Suggest we meet and plot in Flower City 2nd week in D.

  She smiled. Eva couldn’t say anything outright, but the code was so transparent that no one would take more than five minutes to figure it out. Even when Eva was leaving a shopping list on the kitchen table, she obfuscated it. Vida felt a little pang of nostalgia. After so long on the road, she felt sentimental over the four-room house with its gas heater and gasping refrigerator. Mostly she missed Eva.

  Roger was living in Rochester with a woman who was not a fugitive, causing some gossip, some controversy, some anxiety in the Network. Was Eva proposing a possible coup: that Roger, Eva and she try to find a common ground before the Board met? Something was up. She felt a stir of fighting spirit.

  Joel and Vida set off for Rochester, the black Mariah once again functioning at her own chosen speed, chugging them down the byroads as they drank coffee from Natalie’s thermos and ate roast beef sandwiches packed at Jan and Pelican’s house.

  “How come this Eva wants to see you?”

  He wasn’t supposed to know who was on the Board, but how was she supposed to box him or freeze him on demand? Really, some of the rules were just not realistic any longer. “The Board is meeting. She wants to talk first … and we haven’t seen each other since I left L.A. She was one of my roommates.” She was consciou
s of underplaying her feelings for Eva. Why did she let his jealousy dampen her even before he expressed it? Why assume the worst? And what good did trying to conceal her feelings do? They would be with Eva soon enough.

  “Is she the dyke you were lovers with?”

  “You use that word awfully freely. I am the dyke she was lovers with. Do you like to be called a faggot because you had sex with Jimmy?”

  “It was lousy sex.”

  “Does that make it less real?”

  “Sure.” But he was grinning. He handed her back the empty thermos cup. “So she summons you and you come running?”

  “She’s my friend. She’s been my friend for years. Long before we were lovers, and I imagine long afterward”

  “So you’re not lovers with her anymore?”

  “You’re driving me crazy!” She turned from him and glared at the snow-covered Catskills. She would not speak and he did not speak until she began to feel silly. “Joel, maybe you’ll like Eva. Did that ever occur to you?”

  “Great. I can fuck her too. We can all get in bed.”

  “You reduce everything to sex! Eva’s my friend. She stood up to Kevin when nobody else would. She’s my friend and my ally, and all you can think about is that when we lived in L.A. together we made love sometimes.”

  “So it’s not important. There’s no danger you’ll do it again.”

  “Damn you, Joel, it depends on her, too, don’t you see that? I have to be free to feel what I feel when I see her. I don’t dump people for other people. I won’t! I won’t forget her because I met you. If I did that wouldn’t I trade you in on somebody else? You know I love you!”

  “Only because you can’t have the Voice of Radical Radio you were married to.”

  “Leigh wrote me a note, wanting to make up.”

  “Yeah? Are we meeting him in Rochester too?”

  “I tore it up.”

  “I don’t believe you. How come?”

  “It’s over, and I don’t want a game to go on … I’m with you and I want to be with you.”

  “Yeah? You got lousy taste in men. We’ll see what kind of taste you have in women.”

  She was silent for a while. Then she burst out, “Joel, with Natalie in the can, how can I find out about Ruby?”

  “Call the hospital. Say you’re somebody else and ask about her.”

  “But would they tell me straight? I’m afraid to be Marsha again.”

  “Call your brother. He’s on your side, right?”

  “I don’t dare call him at home. If we got caught out that night, if Sharon blew the whistle on us, then Paul’s phone is tapped, I can’t chance it. I’ll call him at his bar. He stops there every day after work. I know where it is. If I can just remember the name.” She shut her eyes tight. The street, the rush-hour traffic, the snow, the early darkness, Paul pushing out of the heavy door. She kept thinking instead of the name of the chain of fast-food places the lawyer had mentioned, the Dog House. “Something to do with animals”

  “The Cat’s Meow. The Elephant’s Trunk. The Hair of the Dog, The Cock-a-doodle-Doo. They ought to ask me to name bars. The Tiger’s Paw—”

  “That’s it! The Brass Monkey.”

  He patted her head. “How did you get there from tiger’s paw?”

  “A story on the radio we all listened to when I was little: ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ I remember how scared we got—all but Grandma, who couldn’t follow the English and kept asking us, But what’s wrong wit-chu?” She heard herself imitating her grandmother for the first time in twenty years. “And Ruby was just as scared as we were! Paul and Mama and me, all hugging each other, and Grandma thinking we’d gone nuts.”

  She called from a pay phone at a time she hoped Paul would be in the bar. “Brass Monkey.”

  “Is Paul Whippletree there? He comes in every day, this time. A big guy—”

  ”Sure, sure, I know Paul. Who wants him?”

  “Just say a friend.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  About a minute later Paul picked up the phone. “Joy? What’s the big deal? It’s not cool for you to call me like this.”

  “It’s not Joy. I’m calling long distance, never mind from where, and don’t say my name, bro, please!”

  “Jesus, Steve told me it was Joy calling. What’s up? How’re you, toots?”

  “How’s Mama?”

  “Better, some better. I think she’s getting her act together and she’s gonna make it. She’s back upstairs and they’re letting her out of bed”

  “Bro, that’s wonderful, that’s perfect. I love you!”

  “Hey, I guess you know the Feds got Natalie, and Sandy has her kids. Peezie’s a real little champ. She’s talked my daughter Marla into running every A.M. And Sam, he’s got Joy and Mary Beth fighting over him”

  “He takes after you”

  “Go on, they lead me around by the nose and the you-know-what. I can’t talk too long on this. You okay? Are you coming back?”

  “Not real soon. Take care, bro. Tell Mama I called, but don’t tell her even where I called you. Okay?

  She got back In the car grinning so hard her cheeks felt as if they would tear. “Ruby’s better!” She remembered her superstition when she was feverish that since she had gotten sick like Ruby, when she got better Ruby too must grow healthy. She would never admit that belief to a soul, but she was convinced that somehow she had helped. She was superstitious about few things, but she was superstitious about Ruby. Ruby was basically irrational, so why shouldn’t irrational forces work for and against her? Now Vida felt ready to take on the Board.

  They met Eva in a Howard Johnson’s on the edge of town. As they walked in, she saw Eva at the counter, her black braids hanging straight down her back. Eva’s old shearling coat was slung over the back of the stool so that the curly side showed. She wore a faded red shirt, jeans and high-heeled Western boots. When Eva saw them and passed to the cashier to pay and leave, she was taller than either of them by two inches of her own and two of the boot heels. As she walked by, one eyelid almost fluttered, a ghostly wink. Vida ordered an orange juice to go; Joel got a mocha chip ice cream cone. Then they strolled back to the car.

  Eva was waiting in the lot. “No wheels. I’m Eva”

  ”Joel. How’d you get here? he asked.

  “Hitchhiked. I don’t like to, but now I have a nice ride back.”

  Vida got in back, tactfully and to let Eva give directions. Please let them get on, she begged. Please. I’ll do everybody’s dishes all weekend. Why did she have to feel as if she were maneuvering a battleship by straws when she had to be with Joel around people from her old life?

  Eva, nodding, waving, giving overprecise directions, was physically maternal. She held, she rocked, she caressed. Sex between them was not so much passionate as soothing—entirely different from Vida’s lovemaking with Lohania so many years before: not violent, not ecstatic, not smolder-ingly orgasmic, but relaxed and dreamy. Eva and Vida had been friends a long time before they had been lovers. Underground, Eva, who came from an Iowa farm family of many sisters, had discovered other women and became tentatively and then vehemently a feminist and a lesbian, in whatever order. By the time they had both lived in Hardscrabble Hill a few months, Eva was defining herself in opposition to Kevin and Bill and Tequila.

  As Eva gestured to Joel, her long black braids held by pieces of embroidered blue ribbon swung to and fro over the seat. Gently Vida tugged one, and Eva threw her a broad warm smile over her shoulder. Joel, who missed nothing, scowled in the rearview mirror. “No—there!” Eva cried. “You missed the turn. That was our right.”

  Joel said sulkily, “You have to tell me before I’m on top of it”

  “But I did. I told you two blocks ago and I told you again just now … No, don’t U-turn. Just go around the block.”

  Please behave yourself, please, she said to the wavy black hair on the back of Joel’s head. “You could be brother and sister” she said almost pleadingly. “Black, black ha
ir.” She caressed the back of Joel’s neck, to balance the equation. “Maybe I should have black hair too?”

  Eva was looking closely at him, not having missed the hint of the caress. At long last they pulled into the driveway of a single-family home with an overturned bright blue sled on the lawn, the stumpy remains of a melting snowman. On the front storm door a Christmas wreath of plastic holly was tacked up. Joel shut off the engine as they sat in the car.

  “This can’t be it,” Vida said.

  “It can be because it is” Eva hurriedly added. “You know she’s outside”

  “Is this safe?”

  “Tim thinks so.”

  “Tim?” Joel asked.

  “Roger’s name now.”

  He turned to ask Vida blandly, “Another of your lovers or ex-lovers?”

  “No,” Eva said, bending toward him. “Only me. You met Roger under the name of Bud—when you aced him out for Kiley. Remember?”

  “We’re all one big happy family.” Vida lolled back. “Good, great, wonderful. We’ll get a lot done. Roger/Tim can glare at Joel and Joel can glare at you. Maybe I can work up something to glare about.”

  “It shouldn’t take long the way it’s going.” Eva knelt on the seat to face her. “Then Kiley can pick up the pieces at the Board. You know she’s been campaigning to kick me off. Alleged separatist tendencies”

  “I don’t think she can swing it,” Vida said. “You have a lot of support. People trust you.”

  “You have a hefty amount of support too. I’ve been out politicking myself, all across country.” Eva rested her elbows on the seat and her chin on her hands. “You and I are seen as the feminist block. Also, believe it or not, you have some of Kevin’s old followers—irrational as that may seem. They see you pulling for action. Then some folks are just pissed at Kiley or Lark for some decision—like getting sent to Des Moines or Toledo. Your seat is secure”

  Vida sat up, catching Eva’s gray gaze. Eva’s face was broad and girlish. She wore big round glasses with a faint bluish tint. Her skin was smooth and ivory with cheeks so pink she looked, except for the blackness of the braids, like a Gretchen doll, a big-boned calm lovely slow-moving and slow-spoken woman with a voice that suggested some of the range and power of her singing. Vida said, “You know I’m pushing an antinuke action”