by Marge Piercy
“No, no.” She waved her hand. “I just found it.”
“How did you lose it there?” Annette took a step outside, peering at her. “You’re soaking wet. Are you all right?”
“I’m just going in.”
“Come over and have a cup of coffee. We haven’t had a good chat since before you went on that tour.”
Daria stood. She could not go into Annette’s house. Annette was too happy. “I have to rush back to work. We’ll get together soon, absolutely!” She lurched for the shelter of her house.
When she was safely inside she lay down on the floor. The phones rang, one after the other, but she let them go. When she finally rose to start supper and took the messages off her answering machine, the voice of Lorraine told her that Ross was held up at a business meeting and would not be home until late.
8
The next day, Friday, she had breakfast, threw up and tried to work. On her calendar was the notation to shop for food today, but how much should she buy? Half the time she never knew if he was going to show up for supper. She was learning to live with a sense of constant pain, sometimes sharper, sometimes duller, like someone with a chronic disease. Everything in her ordinary routine could give out sudden sparks of pain like a static shock. She called Gretta. Gretta had a busy day but could fit her in at three if she came directly to the travel agency where Gretta worked now, in Harvard Square.
“I’ve only got half an hour.” Gretta took her arm, peering at her, steering her along as if she were senile, guiding her among the cars. “The Algiers is quiet about now.” They went downstairs at the Brattle Theater building. Gretta made her drink mint tea. Daria gave her report.
“Can he be paying the rent? Beacon Street on the river. That has to be pricy. No wonder he wants to put your house on the market.”
“How can I find out who she is? I only know her first name is Lou.”
“You could pick one of those evenings when he’s late at a business meeting and follow him.”
Daria made a motion as if thrusting something aside. “That he hasn’t told me, don’t you think that means it’s all temporary?”
“Or you’re temporary.”
“But if he really loved her, if he wanted to … live with her, wouldn’t he have left?”
“Maybe he hasn’t decided. Maybe he wants to sell the house first. Maybe she doesn’t want to marry him. Maybe she’s waiting for a divorce.”
“I think he knows it’s something that has to run its course, but he’s keeping it secret because he doesn’t want to ruin our marriage permanently.”
“Has he been putting a lot of time lately into keeping your marriage going?”
“He hasn’t left.”
“Yet.” Gretta shook her bracelets. “I’m embarrassed, listening to you. You’re lying to yourself. Can’t you see?”
“If that’s true, everything is a lie. I don’t know him and I don’t know my own marriage!”
“Marriage isn’t a thing. It changes all the time. If you want him, fight for him. Or sit back and wait it out, if you think that will get you anything. But figure out your financial situation. That’s the real bottom line.”
The conversation was short and unsatisfactory. She felt unbuttoned, stumbling out. The Brattle had on its frequent Bogart festival. She had first seen Casablanca there years and years ago with Ross. Even the posters had the power to wound her. Gretta had kept scolding her. She had wanted Gretta to praise her for being bold and soothe her for being hurt and assure her Ross’s silence was proof of the ephemeral nature of whatever was going on in the high-rise on the Charles.
Gretta didn’t understand Ross. He was hurting her, yes, but it was a compulsion. Like his running. Suddenly he felt middle-aged and wanted his youth back. But he would realize that he couldn’t be twenty-four again by changing wives. He could not throw away the riches of her love like socks that had holes worn in them.
She was so engaged in her thoughts she pulled into the drive and waited for the small procession to pass before she registered that they were in any way unusual. It wasn’t until they surrounded her car and a fair fat woman in a baggy green coat banged on her fender that she realized they were pickets of some sort. What on earth? Startled, more annoyed than frightened, she rolled down her window. “What is this? What’s going on here?”
“How’d you like to raise your kids with rats running over the beds?” the fat woman shrieked.
She took in the signs they were carrying. WALKER AND PORFIRIO SLUM LANDLORDS. WALKER’S BUILDINGS ARE FIRETRAPS. LITTLE BOBBIE DIED SO CONDOS COULD LIVE. WE PAY RENT FOR PIGSTIES TO PIG LANDLORDS. SCORE HUMANS 0 WALKER 2.
They hadn’t even made all new signs. She remembered them now; at least she recognized those embarrassing signs with her name all over them. They must be the same people that she had seen near Ross’s office in early November, although she remembered a little girl then. “There’s a mistake here.” She forced herself to speak with false calm, as she used to the first times on television and in front of groups, when her hands would shake uncontrollably but she would imitate the ease she wished she could feel. “Would you mind letting me garage my car?”
“You planning to go hide in the house?” That was a skinny Black man with the 0 to 2 sign.
“You’ve made a gigantic mistake. I have no reason to hide, if you’ll just all calm down.” She couldn’t imagine what they were doing at her house in Lexington. Ross had said it arose from some case in which he was acting as counsel. They let her pull the car into the garage. She got out of the Rabbit and stared at them, standing huddled in the garage entrance staring back at her. Contrary to her impression on the street, there were only five of them, three men and two women. She was glad for the women; they made the scene less menacing. All were bundled in winter coats and boots and gloves, wrapped in mufflers, twined in scarves. A frail-looking girl kept blowing her nose. On the other side of the kitchen door Torte was barking in rising hysteria. She asked boldly, “Who are you people?”
The older woman was fat and the younger one thin. The Black man was the best looking of the lot, underdressed for the day in a good trench coat and long maroon scarf worn with a flourish, his boots down at heel but highly polished. But the man who stepped forward to speak was in his twenties, with curly brown hair and those glasses that turn from tinted to clear when the person wearing them moves from sun to shade. He had a rather high-pitched penetrating New England voice. “We represent the SON Association. That’s Save Our Neighborhood.”
“What neighborhood? I don’t understand.” One thing she was sure of was that they weren’t her neighbors.
The other white man was the most menacing. He was big, hulking, older than the other two men although younger than the fat woman. He hung back, his black eyes glowering. With a muffler looped around his throat he seemed to have no neck at all but loomed there, a huge hostile Humpty Dumpty. He wore a glove on his right hand only, because his left was crossed with a bandage. She wondered if he were a boxer or a professional muscle man. Without him, she would have found the others unalarming in appearance.
The young man, the spokesman, was piping up in his sharp nasal voice all about their neighborhood, when she interrupted. “Allston! I don’t know anything at all about Allston, honestly. I never go there. It’s all a mistake.”
“Mistake, your elbow!” said the fat woman. “Honey, your mistake is thinking you don’t have to deal with us fair and square. Well, surprise! We’re bringing your shame home to you. You ruin our neighborhood, so we’re going to cause a little trouble for you in yours.” She raised her sign and waved it. “Come on, guys, let’s make some noise.”
She did not want them parading in front of the house. Ross would be absolutely furious. Everybody on the street had doubtless seen them already and registered the information on the instantaneous gossip radar of the neighborhood. Even though no one was looking out and the only activity on the street consisted of an occasional child trudging past to supper or an
occasional car pulling into its proper garage, she knew phones were ringing up and down the hill. It was her duty to defuse this scene; to explain gently and firmly to these people that they had come to the wrong place to complain.
She must get supper started and she must deal quickly with them. Ross would be pleased by her quiet and efficient handling of a potentially nasty situation. She would disarm them by showing she had nothing whatsoever to hide. She would do the last thing they expected and thus lighten the confrontation and incidentally get them out of view of her neighbors. “Look, I insist there’s been a mistake, but why argue out here? Come inside and let’s sit down and talk.”
Both women started toward the door. The spokesman said, “Come on, people, we came to picket.”
“But maybe we can get her to fix things. Isn’t that the point?” The fat woman edged nearer to the door.
“People, let’s caucus,” the spokesman said. Grumbling the women shuffled off after him. Daria unlocked the door to take Torte into the yard. He wanted to run around the front, but she tied him up till he was finished.
She called Ross’s office. Lorraine said he was with a client, should she put the call through anyhow? Daria decided that by the time she spoke to him, she would have dispelled the misunderstandings and the strange pickets would be gone back to Allston with their signs and their anger to find out who really owned their buildings.
She peeked out. They stood in a cluster arguing, their signs hanging down disconsolately. She wished they would hurry and come in and stop calling attention to her house as marked with a shame that felt to her secretly connected to the shame of her fraying marriage.
She forced herself to put on a chicken for supper. Back in the late sixties Daria had gone on a few antiwar marches and listened to speeches on the Boston Common, she and Ross and little Robin, with Tracy in a stroller. She had enjoyed all those people walking along united by moral purpose. The march had been a huge picnic on the grass, yet one with a goal.
But to invade someone’s neighborhood, just the five of them, they had to feel foolish. The streetlights had come on. She heard them pounding on the front door. Torte got wild and she shut him into the kitchen, turning the flame low under the chicken. Either the men too had felt cold or the women had won, she thought, drying her hands on her apron and then hanging it over the newel post as she went to let them in.
They glared around the living room with differing degrees of hostility and curiosity. The curly-headed leader Mac simply looked it over and selected the most comfortable chair, where Ross sat to watch television. He tossed his down parka on the couch, where both women perched, shrugging off their ratty cloth coats. She did not take anyone’s wraps because she did not want to encourage them to stay long. The thin one looked even thinner without her coat, dressed in a prim navy dress with a few flakes of white opaquing sticking to the skirt. Peggy used that stuff, to make corrections. The girl was Robin’s age and her nose leaked like a faucet with a faulty washer. When she felt Daria observing her, she hurriedly replaced the Limoges dish she was examining.
“This is a real nice room. You got a nice home here,” the Black man said. “These all antiques?”
“A few of them are. Most are just copies. Imitations.”
The hulking man wandered around the room, his injured hand shoved in his overcoat pocket. “This house isn’t imitation. Do you know the date?”
“It’s been dated to 1842. Most houses on this hill are modern, but not this one.” Surely they were going to do something besides inventory her living room.
The fat woman snorted, propping her hands on her knees, elbows akimbo. She wore baggy polyester slacks and a flowered shirt with its tail out. Unlike the thin girl, she did not look as if she had come straight from work. “Think that’s as old as our apartment building? We got rats one hundred forty years old. The pipes are real antiques too. But you know that. They’re your rats—probably they pay rent too.” She had a loud cheerful voice. Above her baggy blouse her blond hair was carefully done, as if she had stepped out of a beauty parlor just before taking up her sign.
“I’m Daria Walker,” she addressed the fat woman. “What’s your name?” She would keep everything civil, defused.
“I’m Fay Souza.” She went on to give an address Daria had never heard of. “That’s your building.”
The thin woman was Sherry Sheehan. The Black man introduced himself only as Elroy. He had unbuttoned his trench coat. Under it he wore a green hospital smock. The spokesman, dressed in a Harris Tweed sports coat with a clashing plaid flannel shirt and jeans, said he was Mac Ogilvie. The hulking man introduced himself in a deep rumbling sleepy voice as Tom Silver. “You use the name Walker, not Porfirio?”
“Porfirio was my maiden name. I haven’t used it since I got married twenty-two years ago.”
“Except to own buildings under,” Mac Ogilvie said.
“Porfirio.…” Fay Souza was squinting. “Like Tony the Pony.”
With a faint touch of fear she wondered if they could mean her brother. Probably they meant some notorious Mafia figure. Fay must be one of those people who thought anyone with an Italian name was in the mob. “My brother lives in Belmont, not in Allston.”
Mac grinned. “We know. Oh how we know.”
Tom Silver was still brooding on her. “You’re the Walker who writes the cookbooks.”
She nodded, surprised.
“Shit.” He turned away, grimacing with contempt. “That’s disillusioning. I was afraid it was you, from a picture on Cool as Cucumber Soup.”
Maybe he wasn’t a boxer or a muscle man, if he read her cookbooks. “Look, I don’t know Allston. I don’t even know anybody who lives there—”
“You’re looking at them now,” Tom Silver said. “Meet your tenants.”
“Your name is down on the deed, honey,” Fay Souza said. “We looked it up downtown, Sandra María did, so you can’t con us.”
“There are hundreds of Walkers. You’re wrong about it being me.”
“Think there are dozens of Daria Walkers or Daria Porfirios?” Tom Silver was on the prowl, fingering the paneling, stooping to peer up the fireplace. He made her nervous, a bear lumbering around her living room.
“It sure says Daria Porfirio,” Sherry said. Robin’s age and just as undernourished. “I wouldn’t mistake a funny made-up name like that.”
“Do you think Sherry is an old-fashioned name? It came off a wine bottle,” Daria snapped and then was ashamed of herself. She must keep everything smooth, civil.
“Do you ever sign papers your husband hands you without reading them?” Tom Silver loomed over her.
“Of course. He’s a lawyer. Do you read forty pages of legal nonsense? Ross—my husband—handles business. Look, he represents a great many people who own property. Maybe one of them owns the buildings you’re concerned about.”
“Concerned! Lady, people have died in those buildings,” Mac piped in his nasal high-pitched voice. “They’re intentionally being allowed to fall into decay. They’re turning into firetraps.”
“You better be concerned too,” Sherry said, fingering the upholstery. “No smoke detectors, rotten fire escapes. They’re so old and rusty you’d break your neck.” Her gaze never fixed on Daria but went round and round the room pricing, counting, deploring.
“Last week in 219 they were without heat for five days—without heat and without hot water,” Fay Souza said. “Those furnaces are antiques too. We got lots of antiques. You want to trade?”
“Would you mind giving me a list of addresses you’re talking about?” She stood. “I’m going to call my husband at his law office.… Why didn’t you picket him there?”
“We did.” Tom Silver was poking at the fireplace. “You have a leak in your chimney that’s undermining the wall here.”
“If you go inside an office building, that’s trespass,” Fay said. “Out front doesn’t get the point home hard enough. Tom, what are you doing, looking for work? Get out of there.
”
“We want to bring your shame home to you,” Mac announced, following her to the phone.
“Yes, Lorraine, put me through to Ross anyhow. It’s important.”
“What is it now, Daria?” Ross sounded annoyed.
“There are people here from an organization called SON. They came from Allston to picket this house because of grievances about buildings they say I own.”
“Christ. Call the police. Talk to Captain Devon. No, I’ll do it.”
“The police? That’s a little extreme. They’re perfectly rational people. I’m talking to them now.”
There was a stiff silence. “Where are you talking to them?”
“I thought it best they not remain out front making a scene. I invited them in to talk. You said those pickets had to do with some case. Why is my name on those buildings, Ross? Whose buildings are they anyway?”
“It’s merely a legal convenience. Never mind. Get them out of the house.”
“But why? If we haven’t done anything wrong. Are they our tenants? Do we own those buildings? Why can’t we explain things to them?” Why can’t you explain things to me, she wanted to add. Why don’t you tell me anything?
“You let those animals in the house and they’ll tear it down. They’re probably stealing you blind while you’re out of the room.”
“Ross, I think you should come home right now and talk to them. It sounds important to me.”
“You’re crazy! I’m not coming anywhere near the house until they’re cleared out. They’re a bunch of troublemakers. They don’t represent anybody but their own big mouths. And that Black queer Elroy isn’t even in our buildings.”
“You do know who they are!”
“They’ve been causing trouble since March. I’m getting an injunction.”
“Darling, why escalate this? I did invite them in. Please, Ross, come home and talk to them face-to-face and fill me in on what we’ve gotten involved in. I’m sorry if I did the wrong thing, but—”
“You clear them out, Daria. I’m not coming home tonight.” He hung up.