by Marge Piercy
“They got a swimming pool, a sauna, a little gym. They got machines that take your blood pressure. They got cardrooms, cable TV, machines for doing your personal laundry, what isn’t provided by the weekly linen service.”
Obviously he had been looking over the possibilities, for he passed a brochure around the table. Ross was looking at Pops with a wry expression, in which she could read the annoyance around his mouth. As well as he got on with her brothers, he had always been skeptical about her father, no doubt an attitude he had picked up from her. They were all waiting for the inevitable pitch. She was convinced Joe had known this was coming tonight.
“Now I’m fine these days. Got years of work left in me. You know it. Healthy as a horse. Maybe I should lose a little weight, but I don’t have to be a bathing beauty at my age, right? But a few years from now, I’ll be getting tired. I don’t want to work every day, even for such a great boss as my own son Joe. I’m going to want to sit in the sun in my old age and regard the fruit of my labors.”
“Pops, the kind of place you’re talking about,” Cesaro waved the brochure disparagingly, “it’s a bit expensive. It’ll use up your whole savings and your Social Security won’t cover what you—”
“Pipe down, Chester,” Joe said. “Listen to Pops. He’s got it all figured out.” He roughed up Cesaro’s thinning hair with a heavy hand.
“I don’t want to spend my old age in a filthy dirty nursing home where they drug you and treat you like a dog sent to the pound. I could move in with Joe, but he has the right to his own life.”
“Pops wouldn’t have much company or any help if he needed it, with us at the restaurant six nights a week,” Joe said.
“So I want to know you fellows are going to pick up the tab, what the government don’t cover. Gussie, she’ll never have a penny to rub on another. That Don will never amount to much. But I know my own sons have all done good for themselves and provide plenty for their wives and their children. I know they want to help their old man, and the same goes for my favorite son-in-law, who’s always been real family to me, just like he was born my own son.”
Ross was displeased; she could tell by his hardened chin and tightened mouth. “I have a daughter just starting college and one just out in the world. My cash flow is mostly committed. I have mortgages in four banks. I don’t have that extra fluidity. Some periods I’m strapped to meet all my mortgages and taxes. I think you might consider a place with a monthly fee you can afford.”
“Between you, you do all right. You come and look over this place with me, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Not some kind of dirty hole you shove an old man into just before his grave. It’s nice. People can have a good time there. If you get sick, they got facilities right on the grounds.”
Tony shook his head woefully. “Sounds swell, Pops, but I’m paying alimony, I’m paying child support, I’m bleeding dry. In a few years, things’ll be brighter for all of us because we’ve got some good property nailed down, Rusty and me, but these are tight times.”
Cesaro sighed as if deeply aggrieved. He hated these family councils. Out in the world he was the most successful of the brothers, with his own insurance agency, a couple of developments he had a hand in, a highly visible officer in his local Community Chest. But back in the family he was the middle son, the fat kid, the one with glasses they all picked on. “Now I’m a little more diversified than Rusty and Tony, but I can’t carry you alone. Frankly this monthly fee is on the high side. Why not sit tight, get a cleaning lady and when you’re tired of the restaurant, maybe by then—”
Ross burst out, “Maybe the rest of you are in favor of this scheme, but as for me, I can’t swing it, I simply can’t.” He hadn’t been listening, she realized, just fuming.
Lying in bed beside him that night, she moved closer with what she hoped was tactful slowness. “Pops made you angry tonight.”
Ross chuckled. “That old pirate. Always looking out for number one, more power to him.”
“Then you aren’t mad?”
“Not about to agree to anything before all those witnesses.”
“Ross, Cesaro and Tony weren’t overjoyed either, didn’t you realize?”
“I guess so. Tony’s over his head. It’s Joe who’s been cooking this up with the old boy. He could perfectly well stay on in that apartment and get one of his pinochle-playing cronies to move in.”
“That was Cesaro’s idea. Pops could go on eating at the restaurant, even if he didn’t work there.”
“You can see the old boy figuring it out, the high-rise of his dreams. No, I’m not mad anymore—just amused.”
“I guess I mind. Making capital out of her death.”
“I’ll settle it with your brothers when we get back home. We can work out a response between us.”
She eased herself closer to the curve of his back, feeling his warmth like an aura on her skin. Sharing this strange sterile room was a different kind of intimacy, cut off from the thousand tasks and demands and interruptions of home.
“Aren’t you sleepy?” he asked her.
Through the wall she could hear the girls’ television set on, occasional peals of laughter. “Not yet.” She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Are you exhausted?”
“It’s tiring and yet we didn’t do anything all day but chatter and wait around. Funeral’s are such a waste of time.”
“But everything does stop when somebody close to you dies.”
“She was one sad woman. For years she hadn’t done a thing but complain. Don’t you think she’s better out of it?”
“Can you ever say that for somebody else?” She slipped her arms around him, working an arm under.
“I thought you might be stuck down here for a month at least. It went quickly for her at any rate.”
“I missed you. I do feel as if I’ve been down here forever.”
He turned and nuzzled into her shoulder, settling himself closer. “Sure you don’t want to stay on and relax, like Tony?”
“Do you want to?” She was shocked.
“I have to get back to the office.”
“Love, so do I. I’ll ask Peggy if she can come in every day next week.”
“What would it matter if you were a couple of weeks late?”
“But, love, this is a seasonal book. And my editor has scheduled it for the Christmas trade next year.” She could sense by the slackening of his grip that she was losing his attention. “We’re going to be cheated of our Thanksgiving too. Should we have it Saturday instead?”
“It won’t hurt us to skip it one year. It’s a tremendous amount of work for you anyhow.”
“I don’t mind. I’ve always liked it.”
He kissed her, very gently. The shape of his long body through the layers of nylon and cotton struck her into excitement so intense she felt a vast ache, a slow painful burn. She refused to let herself remember how long it had been since they had made love, but the room had been warm and the air conditioner on, as it was tonight. The lack of easy regular habit gave an air of awkwardness to their embraces—“Sorry, my elbow”—that she associated with their lovemaking years before, when she had still been four-fifths a virgin after marriage and his experiences had been accumulated through fumbled groping and fast copulation in the backseats of cars.
They were a little tentative. She had the sense of his body as exotic to her. He was thinner than he had been in a decade, thinner than at any time since he had left the government. Then he had burned off his food in an intense work frenzy and felt frail, bony in her arms. The sharp protrusion of his ribs, his shoulders, his knees, the long bones of his body conjured the younger husband she had loved perhaps more passionately although less sensually.
The sharp bones of his body stuck into her with an angular insistence they had lacked for a long time. Any caress tonight made her breath catch and then run ragged and fast as white water. She felt as if she could come to orgasm from kissing, sucking his mouth, his tongue, his lips. She tho
ught, It is like eating, it is nourishment and I’ve been starving.
For a moment as he came in she hurt a little, it was that long since they had, and then she felt fine. She imagined from what she had seen of her brothers that Ross was probably unusually large, but she had no other basis for comparison. She always prepared herself for him, often using jelly; but tonight she was so wet the lack did not matter. How beautiful it was to feel him on her, in her again, in the intimacy that was the core and the symbol of all the rest. Here was the heart of being a couple, coupling. At last. Close again, joined together. Nina would have understood, for she had deeply loved Pops. Life in death, she did not care, they were joined again.
He paced himself, moving up against her in a new way that she liked. It took her a while to come but then she did, with a great sighing of her whole body, a gusting through her and then a vast ease, as if her body were big as a sandbar and shining from within with its own soft red glow. The aftershine was with her long after he had changed his pace, building up to his orgasm, giving that deep whistling moan that seemed to issue from the bottom of his belly as he too came. They were lovers again, again man and wife, united, one body renewing itself. They were we again. Through the wall came Robin’s high piercing laugh, her child, his child. For the first time in days she fell asleep at once, softly drifting.
Something woke her. After she reached for him, did not find him in bed, called his name and got no answer, then checked the bathroom, she realized it was probably his careful closing of the door that had nonetheless roused her.
What could be wrong? The girls? It was silent in their room, next door. Her watch on the bedside table read midnight. Putting on slippers and robe, she slipped into the night that closed around her skin like a tepid bath. Leaving the motel room door open, the air conditioner ceaselessly churning, she peeked at the room her daughters and Trish shared. It was dark. Their door was shut. She heard nothing but their air conditioner.
As she walked past the row of dark and still lit rooms toward the office, she asked herself what could have gone wrong. Had he heard something? Their rented car was safe outside. Then she saw him in a lighted phone booth by the ice machine, his tall frame constricted, the receiver pinned by a lifted shoulder.
All evening at the restaurant he had slipped away to try to call. She had assumed he was calling the airport trying for a better flight. That night she kept trying to reach him, where had he been? Something was wrong, something bad. She watched him talking in the booth and could read from his body language, the way he hunched around the receiver curling his body to it, that he was speaking personally, emotionally. His face was suffused with a kind of tender desire.
Ashamed of standing there spying on him, she turned and slipped back to their room, shutting the light off. What did it mean? Who could he be talking to with such an intimate face at ten after twelve at night? Rigid, she lay under the sheet. Those strange notes from Lou. She could not ignore her trouble any longer; there was someone else in Ross’s life. He was involved with another woman. He was involved with a woman named Lou.
6
She expected the ashes to be a handful of white dust (perhaps like the bone meal she fed her bulbs) passed to her in a funeral urn. The ashes came out of the back of the funeral parlor in a plastic baggie, like lettuce from the supermarket, and were fitted into a four-by-four-by-six box with a certificate on top to the effect that these were the remains of Nina Maria Porfirio. The box was surprisingly heavy.
Now the ashes rode in her suitcase. She kept imagining that the airline would lose her luggage, and she would have to demand a search for Nina. We’re going north, she addressed Nina, back where you wanted to be. I can’t return you to East Boston. I can’t return you to being a young mother. You liked having babies, you liked talking to us and playing with us as if you were our big sister. You loved cooking and canning and baking, taking the ordinary and making prettiness. You loved being loved and you got so little love, in the end. We fled your unhappiness like a plague we might catch. But I can promise you going home again and I can promise you roses.
The plane was half empty. After Vinnie moved back to the smoking section with Trish, Cesaro spread out, put up the armrests and napped. When Daria saw her brother was asleep, she asked Ross, “Did you smooth things over with Cesaro?”
“I don’t know why you thought his feelings were ruffled. Takes more than that to upset him. We see eye to eye.”
Just so they were back in accord. Cesaro was her favorite brother, the smartest and most sensitive. Once he had dreamed of being an artist, and he still did decent watercolors. He was easy to make fun of, Anglophile, stocky, balding, the butt of family humor when he was growing up.
Daria knew she should not start on the plane but should wait till they were home and Ross was comfortable, rested, but she could not wait. She was too loose with anguish. Besides he looked cheerful, even a little ruddy with sun, with a Globe propped up fencing him off. ARSON PLAGUES NORTH SHORE SUBURB. MURDERER OF TWO SOUGHT. HUB CAR THEFT CAPITAL, FBI SAYS. “Ross … I want to talk with you, really talk. Something’s wrong between us.”
He craned around to see if Cesaro was asleep. “What are you starting up about now?” He glanced at his watch.
“You know as well as I do things have changed between us. We aren’t as close as we used to be.”
“Oh, that again. What was wrong with last night?”
“Why did you leave the room afterward?”
He glanced at her sideways, a flash of ice-blue. “Sorry if I woke you. I was trying not to.”
“Ross, who were you talking to?”
“What’s this inquisition? I was trying to be considerate. There you were finally catching a little shut-eye.”
“Ross, are you involved with another woman?”
“Another woman! What is this nonsense? Are you crazy?” He flung his newspaper down. “Do you know how many phone calls I make in a day? Sure, they’re all women I’m having torrid affairs with. That’s what I do all day when you think I’m at the office.”
“Who were you talking to so late?”
“Carl, of course. He was out all evening. We had a little fire in a building and we’re setting up a meeting with the insurance people, and Tony, of course, our adjuster, to work out the settlement. I was arranging everything.”
She felt like a fool. It was all plausible. Of course he was calling his partner. Yet she saw him still, inturned toward the phone cupped between his cheek and his shoulder, pleading with his hunched body. His face was flushed with a tender desire she had not seen in perhaps two years, not even when they had made love just before. She knew that luminous look, she knew it well.
Ross was looking straight ahead but she could feel his controlled tension like the humming of a generator. She said nothing more. His denial felt so absolute she could not think how to go on. After perhaps ten minutes, he barked out, “It’s incredibly demanding of you to make me account for every phone call I make.”
“Demanding?” She bristled. He had been using that word ever more frequently during the past year. Every time they disagreed, he threw that accusation at her. “Because I wake in a motel room and want to know where you are in the middle of the night?”
“The middle of the night!” he echoed rhetorically. “See how you exaggerate? And what was I doing in that motel room? I came down to keep you company, to go through your family ritual with you. To please you. Your mother never meant anything to me. A perpetual whiner. A woman who never managed to learn how to dress, how to conduct herself. She’s been a millstone around your father’s neck. I was down there trying to make things easy for you at a time I should have stayed put.”
“You know I’d never make a fuss about going out to Indiana if anything happened to your parents, God forbid.”
“I wasn’t making a fuss, you were. You’re the one who’s making a scene on this plane. I wonder if your father really did have all those affairs, or if he was just trying to get down to
the corner for a beer.”
“I’ve never pestered you about your work. I’ve never demanded an accounting of where you go and why. When I kept calling you the night I came down here when I could expect you’d want to know if I arrived safely and what was happening, I didn’t reproach you. I kept trying you till midnight and all the next day. I never demanded to know where you’d been.”
“You were saving it up for a good time, such as on a plane with your brother sitting right behind us.”
“Ross, please, please talk to me! Something’s wrong between us. Something’s very wrong. Let’s deal with it. Let’s try together.”
“What’s wrong is your attitude. Slowly you’ve turned into a real demanding bitch. You want to own every piece of me. You want to control my whole life. You want everything to revolve around you—you and your family and your silly little claque of fans.”
Ross’s voice had risen. Behind them Cesaro stirred and yawned. Ross stood as a signal the conversation had ended and went back to the lavatory. He did not return until the flight attendant announced they were beginning their descent into Logan.
It turned out that Cesaro, driving in from Lincoln, had the only car at the airport, as Ross had come by cab. Cesaro offered to drop them off in Lexington. In the car conversation was forced and choppy.
The front hall reeked of dog piss. The house smelled cold and musty. An odd pile of newspaper lay just inside the door, as if Torte had had an accident and somebody (Annette probably) had cleaned it up perfunctorily and left it to be thoroughly cleaned when she returned. Annette must have forgotten to walk Torte at least once; he was generally pretty good about waiting.
He ran barking to hurl himself on Ross, who hugged him and roughed him up. “Now here’s a boy who’s glad to see me, isn’t he?” Torte carefully avoided the paper in a way that convinced her it was his accident. Ali and Sheba crept cautiously partway down and stared, their eyes light flames in the dark of the stairwell. Then they rushed toward her mewing and led her to the kitchen purposefully. She thought they looked a little thinner, as if in her absence they had shrunk rather than grown.