by Marge Piercy
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Also by Marge Piercy
Novels
Going Down Fast, 1969
Dance the Eagle to Sleep, 1970
Small Changes, 1973
Woman on the Edge of Time, 1976
The High Cost of Living, 1978
Vida, 1980
Braided Lives, 1982
Fly Away Home, 1985
Gone to Soldiers, 1988
Summer People, 1989
He, She And It, 1991
The Longings of Women, 1994
City of Darkness, City of Light, 1996
Storm Tide, 1998 (with Ira Wood)
Three Women, 1999
The Third Child, 2003
Sex Wars, 2005
Short Stories
“The Cost of Lunch, Etc.”, 2014
Poetry Collections
Breaking Camp, 1968
Hard Loving, 1969
4-Telling (with Emmett Jarrett, Dick Lourie, Robert Hershon), 1971
To Be of Use, 1973
Living in the Open, 1976
The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing, 1978
The Moon Is Always Female, 1980
Circles on the Water, Selected Poems, 1982
Stone, Paper, Knife, 1983
My Mother’s Body, 1985
Available Light, 1988
Early Ripening: American Women’s Poetry Now (ed.), 1988
Mars and Her Children, 1992
Eight Chambers of the Heart, 1995 (UK)
What Are Big Girls Made Of, 1997
Early Grrrl, 1999
The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme, 1999
Colors Passing Through Us, 2003
The Crooked Inheritance, 2009
The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980–2010, 2012
Made in Detroit, 2015
Other Works
“The Grand Coolie Damn” in Sisterhood Is Powerful, 1970 (pamphlet)
The Last White Class, (play coauthored with Ira Wood), 1979
Parti-Colored Blocks for a Quilt, (essays), 1982
The Earth Shines Secretly: A Book of Days, (daybook calendar), 1990
So You Want to Write: How to Master the Craft of Writing Personal Narrative, 2001; Enlarged Edition, 2005
Sleeping with Cats, (memoir), 2002
Louder: We Can’t Hear You (Yet!), The Political Poems of Marge Piercy, 2004 (CD)
Pesach for the Rest of Us, 2007
My Life, My Body (Outspoken Authors), (essays, poems, and memoir), 2015
Fly Away Home
A Novel
Marge Piercy
Ladybird, ladybird
fly away home.
Your house is on fire.
Your children will burn.
1
Like many women, Daria both loved her mother and prayed not to become her. Often Daria felt helpless before her mother Nina’s woes, yet her first impulse was to reassure herself: I am different. I have a good and faithful husband, I have my own work, I live in a beautiful house, I like my life. Misery was not hereditary or contagious. Since the plane had taken off late from Chicago, Daria had been dividing her time between worrying about her younger daughter Tracy, who had gone away to college for the first time, and Nina, who had sounded more depressed and lonely than usual on the phone last night. Was Nina really sick? Or just unhappy?
Grey murk enclosed the plane, clouds on which it bumped and slipped and veered as if bouncing over a shifting sea of children’s marbles. Daria felt a little sick. Four-thirty on a Friday, Boston’s Logan Airport was embroiled in its customary traffic jam. On the invisible ground hidden in some random direction, cars would be backed up through the Callahan Tunnel, while here in the lumpy air, planes circled like blind boxes.
Daria had a fatigue headache. For ten days she had been rushing through seven cities. She had been kept up past midnight, then forced to rise at five-thirty for morning television shows or to catch early planes to other cities. Everywhere she had to put on exhibitions to plug her cookbook in an unfamiliar studio with no rehearsal, no backup, no repeats and a technical staff she had never seen before. In the canvas bag wedged under the seat in front of her was that minimal equipment she needed for the two to four minutes she was given.
Still once she was on camera or in front of a crowd, she got excited and involved, no matter how many times she had given the same spiel. Since studios and department stores generally lacked stoves, she cut up local vegetables, showing how to slice and display crudités for hors d’oeuvres or a first course, with her patter. “People always feel virtuous when they eat raw veggies, it’s almost as if they’re dieting by eating. You have them in a good mood, especially if you want to serve something more fattening, such as a delicious pasta next.” The knife and honing block, the platters, the spices for dip all had to accompany her on the plane, because at least once every tour her luggage went off to Juno while she was heading for Houston. There was usually that little scene at the metal detector when her knife went through, and sometimes that pouch was taken by the flight attendant until landing. Her carry-on luggage always rattled in spite of how well she packed the platters. She was an old pro. Her index finger was still infected from the cut she had given herself on camera in Atlanta, but she had simply carried on smiling. Demonstrating with flash was fun, even the twenty-eighth time.
Closing her eyes against the dismal cabin, she saw Ross’s face. She had not been able to reach him the night before, but finally she had caught him in his law office while she was waiting and waiting to board the plane at O’Hare. She missed him, a raw loose feeling in her. They had married so young they had formed each other. She had come to him not fully human, a fish-girl, half jelly and half bones. He had been raw, bright, idealistic and entirely unsure of himself, spiny as a sea urchin, shy as a feral cat. Home, please, home, she begged, concentrating on the murk and the plane. Slowly she spun her wedding ring round and round on her finger as if rubbing a lamp that could emit a genie.
Somewhere under the grey sludge, Ross was waiting, watching the clock. Maybe Robin their older daughter would be with him. Tomorrow was Daria’s forty-third birthday. She had discharged her last obligation to promote the new book, except for cooking schools and demonstrations around Boston. Did the engines sound funny? She caught herself breathing through her mouth like Torte, their dog, when he was scared. The day after her birthday she could go back to work on the new cookbook she was writing. That would be paradise: to be home, her place, her peace, her husband—alone for the first time since Robin had been born. She would talk to Ross about bringing Nina north for a visit, even if Pops wouldn’t come. That would cheer Nina up, seeing her children and grandchildren. She would call tonight and make sure Tracy was coming home for the weekend.
Suddenly the sound of the engines changed as the flight attendant rapidly recited that landing litany, make sure your tray tables are upright. Daria hugged herself, glancing around her seat for stray items. Home. Her stomach was stripped raw, her complexion mottled with poor food. She had suffered from bad dreams. But almost immediately she was being returned to Ross, her love, and things would be better between them. He would have missed her. Now things would be just fine.
The next morning, Daria’s birthday present from Ross was more intimate and frisky than had been true in years. He tended to give her safe gifts, leather pocketbooks, cardigan sweaters, or if he was feeling truly flush, small classically set jewels. This present was a nightgown and peignoir set in black satin and handmade lace. The trouble was that it said Small. She wore Medium.
“The idiot salesgirl must have mixed it up,” he thundered
. “Damn Lord and Taylor’s.”
He had not actually bought the gift, she assumed. Nowadays he sent his secretary Lorraine out to shop, but Lorraine knew Daria’s sizes and would never have made such an error. She had a reassuring image of Lorraine in one of her beige fitted suits poking at the word processor or shunting calls around the three-man law office. For an instant she wondered if through the size Ross was obliquely chastising her, for he had been dropping hints that she was overweight.
Daria found fluctuations of her body difficult to take seriously. She had never been thin and she had never been fat, but always more or less pleasantly rounded and very slightly plump. At the moment she was within five pounds of her weight the day they had married, twenty-two years before. She was not in the habit of worrying about her body, viewing it as accessory; sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier as their habits together dictated. Men were silly to attach importance to the momentary shape or style of a female body, when inside and outside everyone was always changing. Yet she went on being the child who had squatted one day under the grape arbor of her family’s home in East Boston and thought as the wasps buzzed in the ripe black grapes, I am Daria Porfirio, only me, there’s only one of me. I am seven today, yesterday I was only six, someday I’ll be old like Mama and even like Grandma, but there’s only one of me: an insight she had had to work toward in her large family.
While she remembered, Ross was talking and she was emitting soothing sounds, those maternal chirpings she could give off in sleep, to indicate that the mistake was all right. “But I love it, really. It’s such a romantic present. I’ll trot down there Monday and trade it in for my own size.”
He looked dubious, rocking on the balls of his slippers, in his old navy bathrobe. She had bought him a beautiful cashmere robe last Christmas, but it only came in camel and he had never worn it. Blue, blue, blue. “You can get something else,” he said.
“Never. I love my present, really! I’m only sorry I can’t try it on for you till Monday.” She imagined herself stuffed into the nightgown, bulging out of it like a double-dip ice-cream cone, and smiled ruefully. When they had first been together, Ross had used to ask her what she was smiling at. She would try to describe the images, but they were not transmittable.
Their terrier Torte was barking at the door. Ross let him in, kneeling to give him a big hug. “There’s my boy, there’s my bundle of joy.” When he had fussed up Torte enough, he asked her, “Want a cappuccino, birthday girl?”
While he made the coffee, on impulse she went into the garden, taking her basket and clippers. Bronze chrysanthemums, yellow, lavender. Bronze had the strongest scent. She had read that chrysanthemum leaves were edible; she must check that by asking Alice, her botanist at MIT. People liked pieces on cooking with flowers as much as she enjoyed writing them. She picked monkshood, dark velvety blue. Oh, and the last Dr. Brownell rose, buff washed with pink. She tilted her head to look up at the maple behind the garage, a brilliant torchy shade between orange and yellow. Before she had left on her publicity tour, the tree had been blotched with cooking apple green.
She could hear Ross singing in the kitchen “La donna è mobile.” He had caught a passion for opera from her own father. It was about the only field on which they could easily meet. Perhaps Ross had picked out the present himself and simply not noticed that nightgowns came in different sizes. It could be a sign of his caring.
At the sink she deftly sorted her flowers into two vases, one for bronze and yellow, one for cobalt and lavender, then for the rose a tiny old pale lavender bottle from the days of their antique hunting together.
He handed her the cappuccino, finishing his song with a flourish and a bow to Torte, who sat thumping his tail on the tiles, his eyes gloating on Ross. Torte was nine years old and beginning to show his age. The machine that made the cappuccino had been her Christmas present two years before. She did drink a lot of coffee. Perhaps he had considered that the machine appropriately touched her ethnic base, for Ross thought that way sometimes.
She carried her coffee and the vase of bronze chrysanthemums to the narrow table in the bay window facing south to the garden, her favorite spot downstairs. Although her kitchen was efficient and large, it was darkened by the maple. Even if she was only having a quick cup of coffee, she carried it into the dining room to the trestle table by the windows facing her garden.
Of course the room centered on the big table for company and more formal family dinners under the chandelier. Now that Ross was so successful, they entertained a little less aggressively than the five nights a week that had been typical. What she liked about dinner parties was planning the menus and then cooking. The people themselves often were dull, but she had used them as guinea pigs for whatever she was working on: Indonesian, Mexican, Provençal, Hungarian, New England, or whatever new dishes she had invented.
He sat staring into his cup. She asked, “You’re having it black?”
“Diet.”
She had the impulse to tell him the maple today was just the color of his hair. She was not sure what held her back. She felt a little shy. “You know, I had to go on this tour—it’s written into my contract,” she said tentatively. He did not answer. His nickname among men was Rusty, but that did not suit. His hair was the prettiest color she had ever seen on a man. The years had thinned it somewhat but the color was undimmed, the feature by which she could pick him out in a crowd. Red-gold was the name of a floribunda rose. She had planted three in a bed set in the lawn against the backdrop of the granite grey ledge—a little homage she kept to herself, for he would have found it silly. He was still staring out the mullioned windows, perhaps at the flock of juncos that had just arrived. He was whistling softly the same song from Rigoletto and drumming his fingers in time to the music. Ross had so much energy that rarely was he completely at rest: usually some appendage was jiggling or tapping or swinging.
“They’re early this year,” she offered.
“What? Who’s early?”
“The juncos. I noticed them for the first time this morning.”
“Early winter maybe. Snowbirds. If they do know.” He was looking at them now. “Did we send in those forms from Audubon?”
“Yes, love. Next Saturday we make the pickup. I found the form on your desk and sent it in with a check—six fifty-pound bags of sunflower seeds, five of wild bird mix, five pounds of thistle and two bags of cracked corn, right?”
A phone rang as they both waited to see which one. It was hers and she rose to take it. “Mama, Mama,” Tracy bubbled. “Happy Birthday! I didn’t take the bus. I got a ride but I’m in Dorchester.”
“Dorchester?” Daria winced. The southern part of Boston was miles from Lexington.
“Because that’s where Betsy’s boyfriend lives.”
“Aren’t you coming home?”
“Can’t you or daddy come for me? It’s gruesome to get there on the T, particularly on the weekend. First the Red Line, then the Arlington bus and then change again at the Lexington Line. I’ll be all day, Mama. I got you such a great present, I can’t wait to give it to you.”
Daria covered the mouthpiece. “Tracy didn’t take the bus from Amherst. She got a ride, but only to Dorchester. I think we’ll have to pick her up.”
“Dorchester? That’s almost as far as Amherst. What’s she doing in Dorchester? That girl is completely unreliable. You can’t count on her for a thing but trouble.”
She gazed at Ross, standing now at his full height, his long face pinched with annoyance. Tracy had guessed the outcome, since she had chosen Daria’s phone to call in on. “I’ll come get you, ducks. Just give me good directions. You know how I hate getting lost.”
Mostly the separate phones worked out. Four years before, Ross’s irritation over the number of times he answered the phone to be asked for her had mounted to critical proportions, around the time she began writing the regular food column for the Globe. The summer book Cool as Cucumber Soup was just out and she was in demand for appearan
ces and speaking engagements and demonstrations. Now she tried to confine business calls to weekdays, when he wasn’t home; with her separate listing, the problem had diminished.
Other problems loomed. “Ross.… Don’t start the weekend angry at Tracy. You’re not fair to her. If Robin’s more responsible, Robin is after all four years older. Try not to be so hard on Tracy.”
“You didn’t say one word of reproof. You encourage her.”
“It’s her first visit home from college. I miss her. Let’s make it nice.”
Not wanting to labor the point further, she ran up to get her purse. A suspicious lump in the big bed. Reaching under the covers, she found the kittens, brother and sister twisted in a double S and sound asleep. She dragged them free and carted them in a drowsy bundle, still clutching each other, out to the dooryard garden and dumped them. “Go play! Sleeping till eleven A.M. No wonder you want to run up and down the stairs all night.” Their golden eyes regarded her from their little black heads as with disapproval they watched her around to the garage.
As she backed the Rabbit out, she thought the drive wouldn’t be such a bad idea: she would have a chance to talk to Tracy alone. Tracy and Ross had been fighting a lot during the past year, but Daria felt close to her younger daughter. Tracy needed her, whereas Robin didn’t seem to need anyone, or wouldn’t admit it if she did.
Tracy took more after her in appearance, in emotional temperature, in sensual nature. Tracy was the family enthusiast, although that was less marked now than when Tracy had gone through her religious phase. Then Tracy had been Teresa, the name on her birth certificate and Daria’s grandmother’s name. The newly pious Teresa had prayed on her knees for long hours at a private shrine to Saint Teresa in her bedroom. Then she trumpeted she was about to become a nun. Daria had never been religious after first communion. She had formally lost her faith in public high school—which she attended after parochial grade school—but she had never owned much. Nina, for all her martyrdom, was a long-lapsed Catholic who attended Mass only on the main holy days for the socializing and the pomp. Nina’s father had been an anarchist who hated the Church; Daria’s had not been a religious family. Her parents had made little fuss about her marrying a Protestant.