by Marge Piercy
“Don’t sound so depressed.” Tom put his arm around her. “She’s coming to you of her own free will, finally. Can’t you enjoy that?”
Daria considered. “Yes. How’re we doing in the birthing business?”
“We got another on the way, but we seem to be getting bored with the whole business,” Sandra María answered.
Sheba was lying with the three kittens at teat, not rising to help this one out. She looked up at Daria with a piteous interrogative mrew? This one was coming head first but very slowly. When it was finally out, Sheba showed no sign of interest. Perhaps tired of dealing with the first three, she lay still and did not lick the new one. Daria picked it up gently in its slimy wrap and presented it to her. Sheba gave a perfunctory couple of licks. Finally Daria gently ruptured the membrane and was about to present it to Sheba. The last afterbirth was emerging. Sheba slowly ate it. Then she turned to the final kitten as Daria knelt beside her, and ripped its umbilical cord, lying down with all the kittens now at teat. The last one was black, female and something was wrong. Daria bent closely. Its intestines protruded from its naval into a little sac. “Oh, no!” she said softly. “Mariela, would you get me some … some rubbing alcohol from my bathroom? Please. It’s on the middle shelf.”
“I’ll get it,” Sandra María said.
“Please, no,” Daria said with emphasis. “Mariela can reach it. Stand on the closed toilet seat.”
“Here I go! I can reach it!”
As soon as Mariela left the room, Daria carried the fourth kitten to the sink, ran warm water and held it under. Sandra María watched her horrified, and Tom tried to stop her. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t save it,” she whispered. “It’s not operable. See?” She held out the kitten for an instant and then plunged it under. It was vigorous, unfortunately, but that kind of hernia was lethal. When the kitten finally hung limp under the water, she quickly put it in the garbage before Mariela came back, feeling doubly guilty. That was the birth defect they had feared, although the others seemed healthy and intact. “Don’t all look at me that way,” she protested. “Its intestines were all hanging out. It couldn’t live!”
“Here’s the rubbing alcohol,” Mariela said proudly. “I know the bottle, right?”
“Actually this is witch hazel, but it’s fine. Thank you.” Officiously she washed her hands with the witch hazel. Sheba had fallen asleep with her three remaining kittens at teat. Daria hoped she would not realize when she woke that one was missing.
But Mariela could count. She frowned at the box. “What happened to the last kitty? Is it under her?”
“It died, baby,” Sandra María said. “But the others are fine.”
“It died? Where is it?”
“You don’t want to see it,” Daria said. “There was something wrong.” Taking Mariela gently by the shoulder, she led her to the birth box. “Look at those others feeding! Which do you like best?”
“All of them! Poor Sheba looks wore out.” Mariela was kneeling now. “It must be a lot of work.”
Robin arrived soon afterward. She stood outside the screen door on the front porch calling plaintively, “Mother? Mother?”
Daria hurried through. “Robin, the door’s open!”
“I didn’t know if it was the right place.” Robin walked in uncertainly, staring around.
In turn Daria drank her in, her lost daughter. Robin’s beauty was in her coloring, although what she prided herself on was lack of flesh. Robin had Ross’s hair, that bright red-gold, although lighter, finer, and his fair freckling skin; but the shape of her face was all Daria’s, as heartshaped as Daria’s mother’s. In childhood, Robin had been awkward, but years of athletics had given her a slow almost massive grace. She moved well but as if she were far bigger than she was.
Now Daria could read Robin’s lack of ease as she stood first on one foot, then the other. She was still dressed in office clothes, a linen blazer and beige A-line skirt. “There isn’t anything from home!”
“Mostly it all burned. But remember the trestle table? It’s in the kitchen. There’s the little Oriental that used to be in the front hall.”
“Where’s my camping gear? And my old books? My hockey gear?”
“Lovey, everything was burned. Everything in the basement.”
“You don’t have any … real furniture.” Robin was looking around.
“Not yet,” Daria said. “It will take a while.”
Robin stared at her, her face twitching, jumpy with some hidden emotion. Then she burst out, “Daddy’s rich now and you’re poor.”
Very tentatively she put her hand on her daughter’s finely turned shoulder, as if afraid she might bolt. “Divorce is like that.” She was moved by Robin’s concern and wanted to hug her, but did not dare. “Soon this will be a duplex with the apartment above. The work has actually begun. Now come out to the kitchen—that’s the most together room.” She led Robin along with an arm gently embracing her back.
“Do you mind terribly living in a neighborhood like this?”
“I rather like it. I have more friends here already than I ever did in Lexington, friends who are mine and not just couples. And the shopping is the best I’ve had since I lived in Brookline—we’re just over the border, actually.” With regret, she decided not to rhapsodize over the fish market she had discovered, the Jewish bakery, the butcher, the Oriental food store, the little Turkish shop with eight kinds of caviar and twenty-two kinds of smoked fish, not the palaver to please her anorexic daughter. “Now that I’m not married, it was hard living in Lexington.”
“Did people drop you?”
“Sure. They kept waiting for me to sell the house and let some real couple move in.”
Robin was frowning. “I guess there are neighborhoods where a single woman is okay and neighborhoods where you make them nervous. I remember when we were apartment hunting …” Robin stopped and swung around. “Mother, Daddy didn’t even ask me to his wedding. In fact he said it would be a little awkward. That’s what he said! It would be a little awkward. Because his ugly wife is just eight years older than I am!” Robin walked into the kitchen still talking, staring at Daria in her outrage. Only then did she look around and take in the bystanders. “Who are these people?” she demanded.
“This is my roommate Sandra María. We started living together back in Lexington. We were burned out together. This is Mariela, her daughter.”
Mariela lifted her hand up to shake. “You’re Tracy’s sister?”
“Tracy’s been here?”
“Of course. But not too comfortably. Once we have the upstairs finished, it’ll be nicer.” She motioned to Tom. “And this is my friend. Tom. Tom Silver.”
“Your friend?” Robin stared from one to the other in great puzzlement.
“He’s her boyfriend,” Mariela said helpfully. “I had to explain to Tracy too. This is my cat Sheba who is a mama too and she just had babies and one of them died. There was something wrong. The daddy is on the refrigerator.”
“Ugh. They look like little wet rats,” Robin said.
“Have you had supper?” Daria asked.
Robin dismissed the food still spread on the table with a disdainful wave. “I couldn’t eat now.”
Sandra María stood with a sigh, unkinking her back. “I have to study now.” She made a gesture behind Robin’s back at Tom, waving good-bye.
Tom caught the gesture and turned to Daria in appeal. Then he thought better and said, “Here I go. Off to do something or other.”
When Sandra María had cleared the kitchen for Daria, packing Mariela off to watch the battered old TV, slow tears began to run down Robin’s face. Daria took her by the hand and sat her down. “What’s wrong, lovey? You feel your father deserted you?”
Robin nodded. “I thought we were so close! Almost every day we ran together. He said I understood.”
Daria handed her a paper napkin. “Did you have a fight with him?”
“No! But he stopped r
unning with me as soon as he, you know, moved out and started living downtown. And I helped him move, and everything! He had one of Gail’s pointers she gave him, and he used to call up and ask me to walk the dog for him. I had the key. But I started feeling as if the only times he called were when he wanted me to do something. Pick up his dry cleaning. Run errands for him. Walk his dog. Sign some papers. I don’t even like that dog—he isn’t a nice friendly doggy like Torte but this nervous thing that drives me crazy. Where is Torte?”
“He’s dead, Robin. He died in the fire.”
“That’s awful! You should have let Daddy take him!”
“I begged Ross to take Torte. He wasn’t interested.”
“He said you wouldn’t let him have Torte.”
“Robin, I hate to say it, but he was lying. After Ross moved out, Torte wouldn’t eat and he just lay around with his chin on his paws. I thought he’d die of loneliness.… But toward the end he was happy again. He adored Mariela.”
“Who are these people?”
“Friends. Sandra María is a graduate student in public health.”
“Everything’s so different. Nothing’s the way it used to be,” Robin said in a tone of sodden despair. She had stopped crying but she sat slumped over the table. “Why did everything have to change?”
She felt like telling Robin that she was one of those who had encouraged Ross to change everything, but she bit back the words. “When you were saying he kept asking you to do favors, you mentioned signing papers?”
“Yeah, you know Daddy. Always lots of paperwork.”
“But what kinds?”
Robin looked at her as if she had asked something totally rude. “How should I know? Daddy always has papers we witness, that kind of stuff.”
“It wouldn’t be some buildings he put in your name?”
“He does that. You know. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Was he putting them in your name or taking them out?”
“I don’t know, Mother, I never read that crap!” Robin scowled. Then she said reluctantly, “I think taking them out, because he said something about not wanting to worry me, which I thought was a big joke, because why should I worry about a bunch of papers? I remember seeing Gail’s name on one of those things. Her maiden name, even though they had just got married and I was still angry about not being invited.”
“Do you like Gail? How do you get on with her?”
“She talks about her dogs. But otherwise, it’s all her dismal therapist. Her bitchy sisters. A bunch of people I don’t know. What this one has that she doesn’t have.”
“Did you try to make friends with her?”
“I haven’t seen her that much. Who would have thought Daddy would marry her? She’s a physical wreck! He went on about how he needed independence and all the things he wanted to do. We were going to go places we’d both dreamed about. Then practically the day he got divorced, he got married again!”
“But, Robin, that’s why he wanted the divorce. Didn’t you know that? He’s been involved with Gail since last summer at least.”
“But … she isn’t anybody! I tried so hard to please him! I’ve always been bringing him home trophies. Do you know how few women are in that executive training program? And then her—she doesn’t do anything! She doesn’t even have a job. She’s nothing.”
“She’s rich.”
“No, she isn’t. Her family is rich. All she has is some income from a couple of trust funds. The dogs lose money. The rest she has to beg from her father or her uncle. I’ve heard her complaining about it.” Robin blew her nose hard. “We were going to go skiing in Switzerland, that’s what he said. Now he’s moved into her house out there in Hamilton and if I call up, he has this tone of voice and he says, What is it, Robin? As if there had to be something major wrong for me to bother him.” Robin got up and paced to the window, staring out blindly. “I suppose you hate me now?”
Daria pondered her answer. “To me you’re still my baby, the child I raised. How could I hate you? I’ve been very hurt.”
“You had Tracy.”
“But I used to have both of you.”
“It was so special with Daddy! When we ran together, I’d feel so proud. When people saw us, they knew we were father and daughter. How could he forget me so fast?”
“Robin, you and your father had a special closeness. Maybe you’ll have it again, but I have no relationship with Ross anymore at all. I don’t even have respect for him.” She stared at her daughter, wondering how much she could tell her. She feared to presume too much tonight. “What you have to figure out with me is not how to get close to your father again, because that’s none of my business. What you must work out with me, is how to be closer to me. How we can love each other.”
Robin seemed embarrassed. Her cheeks flushed, she peered into the box of kittens as if expecting some answer from them. “How come you live with all these people? To pay the rent?”
“I own this building. I could live in the bottom apartment without going to the trouble and cost of making it a duplex and giving up the rent on the second floor. I like this arrangement.”
“But you were happy the way things were. At least you acted happy.”
“I don’t think depression is a virtue. But everybody changes. Your father has changed incredibly.”
She could feel Robin’s gaze, a mixture of appalled curiosity and distress. “Daddy was always changing. He was up and down. He’d go in and come out like the sun. But you were always my mother. You were always the same.”
Mac deigned to tell Daria, although at the core meeting rather than privately as she would have preferred, more of the hidden side of her family history as told by Lou. “Tony’s the pivot. He’s the one with the experience. He and Bernard, your uncle—”
“Barney, not Bernard.” Mac was enjoying exposing her family to the group. She had not thought of her uncle Barney in years, an enormous man who had tried briefly to make it as a fighter and then worked as a bouncer down in a Combat Zone girlie club, a homely man with a big family, an overstuffed wife Amelia whom he adored, and big floppy white pet rabbits.
“They burned some restaurant another brother had in Salem—”
“Revere.” What right had Mac to this ancient gossip? If Joe and Barney had burned that failing business, they hadn’t hurt anybody. She felt defiant, her family raked back and forth across Mac’s shiny mind. No tenants, no victims; and Joe had taken the money and followed her parents down to Florida.
“Because it was losing money. Your uncle asked the bartender to set the fire—pretending it came from emptying ashtrays into the trash. That gave Tony the idea later to hire some high school acquaintance from East Boston to torch the property you all owned there.”
“So Patsy was right.” Daria lost track of what Mac was saying, off on a fantasy of making all up to Patsy, turning the parking lot into a park. She had forgotten the parking lot in her settlement. She felt ashamed.
When she tuned back in, Mac was saying, “So Tony hired Lou to rewire that twenties-vintage fake Tudor he’s living in, and a great association was born. Lou thinks they started burning earlier but they were using some kind of inferior talent. Lou had already burned several of his own buildings. The first building he torched for hire was one Tony and Ross owned in a section of Dorchester they’d expected to gentrify, but hadn’t.”
“Can we prove any of this?” Fay asked sharply. “Or is this all gossip?”
The sad consensus was that it was only Lou, with a police record, against the worthy well-connected developers. In his hospital greens, Elroy looked weary and not at all dapper. He sighed, speaking for them all. “I don’t know. We been trying and trying. Still they pick us off. And we can’t get out of the corner to land one solid blow.”
Just before finals, Tracy did come home for a visit, at last. The floors were refinished upstairs and Sandra María had painted her own new room and moved in. Tracy’s room downstairs was set up with the fourposter sh
e had wanted and her old marble-topped dresser and her old stenciled chest. Daria had painted the walls the same peach color Tracy had selected for Daria’s old office. She wanted it to be fixed up, totally the opposite experience of Tracy’s last visit.
Tracy was openly astonished. “My room is super,” she bubbled. “But the living room—when are we getting a real couch?”
“Soon, soon. Tracy, you sew much better than I can. Could you make curtains when you come home? The sewing machine survived the fire.”
Mariela claimed Tracy and dragged her off to see, first the kittens, who were just opening round blue eyes. Then Mariela took Tracy on a grand tour, followed by an amused Daria. The back stairway was unusable so they had to go out the front door, up the steps and in the front door of the second story apartment. Daria had not moved yet, because it was still too noisy for her to work upstairs.
“This is going to be Daria’s room,” Mariela announced, swinging open the new door that had been installed to close off the former living room.
“Mama, you have the biggest room in the house.”
“And why not? I’m the biggest woman in the house.”
“This is Mama’s room. The walls are the color of my doll baby’s hair who got killed in the fire.” Mariela swung that door wide also. Sandra María’s family had bought her a new bed. Her room was beginning to come together, like the house.
Daria watched Mariela closely. Night after night Sandra María and Daria met at her bedside, awakened at twelve, at two, at four by her screaming. She seemed to be collecting instances of death. Torte had died, Mr. Rogers the hamster had died, the baby kitten had died: would she die soon? she asked each of them daily.
“This room in between is going to be your mama’s office.” Mariela opened that door, and then the one on the bedroom over the dining room. “And this is going to be Tom’s room.”
“Where did you get that idea?” Daria challenged her.
“He told me so.”
“Mariela, he was teasing you.” Daria glanced at Tracy.
“No, he wasn’t.” Mariela folded her arms, imitating Sandra María when she was laying down the law. “He said this is going to be his room and Marcus is going to live here too. So there.”